Winter Trip to the National Arboretum

Several weekends ago I visited the National Arboretum. I usually only go there in the spring when the azaleas are in bloom, but my friend wanted to see the Grove of State Trees. Here are some photos from my outing:

While I waiting near the gift shop for my friend, I saw this praying mantis egg sack. These are easy to identify because of their tent-like shape. I hope those babies are okay after the recent snowfall we had!

I thought the leaves on this plant were so pretty. It's called Alkanet, and it was used in ancient Egypt and Greece for cosmetic dyes, mostly for coloring lips and nails.

When we made it to the Grove of State Trees, we were surprised that instead of trees, we saw a stone star and plaques circling it that represented each state's tree. We came to see real trees!

Here's what the plaques look like. They are clearly in bad shape, with cracks criss-crossing the images and words. These aren't even the worst ones: some were missing the picture or chunks of text entirely, and others had temporary paper signs.

Eventually we did find an area that featured some of the state trees. Again we were disappointed: not all of the states were represented, and the handful that were had trees that did not look so good. The trees weren't taken care of when they were younger, and now they aren't healthy as adults. I looked into donating to the Arboretum (they obviously need help!), but they don't accept online donations. If you make it hard for people to donate to you, then of course your plants aren't going to be in tip-top shape!

I had never seen a Kentucky coffee tree before, but the pods were huge!

This is what's inside of the pods. The green stuff is quite sticky. I'll admit that I tried some of it: it doesn't taste too bad, but later I learned that it's toxic. Good thing I only took a quick lick...

I also licked some sap from a different tree in the grove. It tasted like how a pine tree smells, but then it had a really bad aftertaste. I also tried to bite into some sort of seed, but it was WAY too hard to even contemplate eating it. You'd think I would eventually learn not to eat wild things, but I just can't help myself...

So, this was an interesting trip to the National Arboretum, but I think I'll just stick to my annual azalea walk...