The Lowly Red Cedar BY JOSHUA HESTON Hillbilly Christmas trees. Pencil cedars. Weed trees. The red cedar (which is in the Juniper Family and is not a cedar at all) clearly has a bad reputation. The tree is made even less popular by the large amounts of pollen it produces during the season. Nevertheless, the…
Sarvisberry by Joshua Heston EDITOR’S NOTE: The small, unassuming sarvisberry tree has a rich history in the Ozark hills, a history which details the important, at-times poetic, relationship between man and nature. The article below is a reprint, permitted from the College of the Ozarks’ Ralph Foster Museum and for that, I am quite grateful.…
Dogwoods by Joshua Heston The flowering dogwood has come to symbolize the Ozarks — as well as the Upper South — which isn’t really a surprise. There are few scenes prettier than an Ozark mountainside in April. The dogwoods — white, pink, and red — mingle with the redbud and wild plum beneath the white…
PLATE 1. Dogwood blossoms, Taney County, Missouri (March 31, 2009). I Was Given — to See — the Trees by Jim Barrett (FROM MY BOOK OF WORD PICTURES) I found myself in a primordial forest of gigantic white oak trees on an Ozark mountaintop ridge line – and I knew that I was looking at…