rarity

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The next time you find yourself at a convention of dendrologists in Boise, here’s a way to slip into the conversation: mention Kentucky yellowwood. Just say you saw one in bloom at Ijams Nature Center and the tree folk will smile accordingly.

Modest-sized, yellowwoods are one of the rarest trees of eastern North America, principally found on the limestone cliffs of Kentucky, Tennessee and North Carolina. They do not bloom every year but when they do, it’s festive. The white flowers are fragrant and dangle in wisteria-like racemes.

Donald Culross Peattie writes, “An icy ran was falling—rain that presently turned to blinding snow—and the roaring creeks of Tennessee were rising fast, on the last day of February, 1796, when André Michaux stopped his horse, somewhere in the lonely woods twelve miles from Fort Blount, to examine a curious tree.” The famed French plantsman knew he was looking at a tree few white men had ever seen.

Currently there’s four in bloom near the parking lot at the nature center.



- Photos taken at Ijams Nature Center

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