More than rocks at Hopewell Rocks
As impressive as the rock formations are at New Brunswick’s Hopewell Rocks, on the trail down from the parking lot to the shore I had to stop and photograph some trees with peeling bark, presumably birches.
© 2018 Steven Schwartzman
Portraits of Wildflowers 
I have to say it ~ these are very a-peeling.
Gallivanta
July 15, 2018 at 6:19 AM
It would be tree-sonous if you didn’t find them a-peeling.
Steve Schwartzman
July 15, 2018 at 7:15 AM
I am glad I spoke out.
Gallivanta
July 15, 2018 at 7:27 AM
Each spoke strengthens the round of comments.
Steve Schwartzman
July 15, 2018 at 7:32 AM
Like New Brunswick, NY is leafless most of the year, and I noticed a lot of homeowners are planting ornamental trees with bark like this – river birch, paperbark, etc. to add a bit of interest to their yard in cold weather. That second shot kind of makes me want to find a stick and give that tree a good scratch.
Robert Parker
July 15, 2018 at 7:13 AM
And you’d only be scratching the surface, given how many peeling tree trunks there are in that region.
Wordplay aside, you make a good observation. It didn’t take long to find an article along those lines:
https://www.egardengo.com/blog/six-trees-with-beautiful-winter-bark-for-small-gardens-8697
Steve Schwartzman
July 15, 2018 at 7:23 AM
Birches don’t do well here, as it is too warm. I imagine it will be one of those species that shifts further north or else fades away. Or, peels off.
melissabluefineart
July 15, 2018 at 9:39 AM
If what you propose is correct, then Canada will become a nation with greater numbers of swingers of birches.
Steve Schwartzman
July 15, 2018 at 10:33 AM
That might be good. One could do worse than be a swinger of birches. Did you happen to see any birches with
their trunks arching in the woods…
…trailing their leaves on the ground
Like girls on hands and knees that throw their hair
Before them over their heads to dry in the sun.?
The older I get, the more I enjoy Robert Frost.
shoreacres
July 15, 2018 at 7:40 PM
No, I didn’t see any like that. Too bad.
The latest Frost poem I learned came last week. It’s called “The Secret Sits,” and it has all of two lines:
“We dance round in a ring and suppose,
But the Secret sits in the middle and knows.”
Steve Schwartzman
July 15, 2018 at 8:11 PM
Nice! Definitely peeling!
Reed Andariese
July 15, 2018 at 2:27 PM
Yes, peeling makes it appealing.
Steve Schwartzman
July 15, 2018 at 4:11 PM
The first photo reminds me of a scroll, like the Torah. If we unrolled it, I wonder what we’d read? As for the second, all those splits and curls make me wonder if anyone’s ever told a shaggy tree story.
shoreacres
July 15, 2018 at 7:47 PM
At the Blanton Museum in Austin this afternoon we saw some Australian aboriginal paintings on eucalyptus bark. Good stuff:
https://blantonmuseum.org/exhibition/ancestral-modern-australian-aboriginal-art-from-the-kaplan-levi-collection/
Steve Schwartzman
July 15, 2018 at 8:02 PM
The first seems to be paper birch. The second seems to be river birch. There are maples and cherries that peel like the paper birch. It makes me wonder what the advantage of that sort of bark is. Three different specie can’t be wrong.
tonytomeo
July 15, 2018 at 9:44 PM
Thanks for your suggestions about the kinds of birches. I was way out of my element up there and have had to rely on people to identify species for me. The head of a national monument in Maine identified a paper birch for me in a photo I took up there. A given species can still have lots of individual variations.
Steve Schwartzman
July 15, 2018 at 10:52 PM
Well, I am certainly no expert. I only know of the few river birches that I have seen in landscapes here. I have only seen paper birches in nurseries. (I think they die shortly after leaving the nurseries because I have never seen a live one in the landscape.) I am more experienced with the paper bark maple and the paper bark cherry; and I do not think you got a picture of either of those. There happens to be a paper bark maple at work.
tonytomeo
July 15, 2018 at 10:59 PM
My fantasy is of some sort of hand-held DNA reader that I can point at a plant to find out what it is. Maybe someday….
Steve Schwartzman
July 15, 2018 at 11:04 PM
Doctor Crusher of Star Trek has that!
tonytomeo
July 15, 2018 at 11:12 PM
Now all we have to do is wait for it to become real.
Steve Schwartzman
July 15, 2018 at 11:14 PM
It IS real. I saw it on television. Duh!
tonytomeo
July 15, 2018 at 11:41 PM
Just like everything on the Internet is real.
Steve Schwartzman
July 16, 2018 at 6:25 AM
No, that is VERY different. People can be real idiots on the internet.
tonytomeo
July 16, 2018 at 1:45 PM
[…] already seen picturesque rocks and peeling tree trunks from Hopewell Rocks, New Brunswick, on June 7th. At one point I looked up from the shore there and […]
Looking up at Hopewell Rocks | Portraits of Wildflowers
July 16, 2018 at 4:32 AM
Loads of texture …
Julie@frogpondfarm
July 18, 2018 at 10:12 PM
This turned out to be an excellent trip for texture, especially because of coastal rocks.
Steve Schwartzman
July 18, 2018 at 10:14 PM
I love these textures – sorry I have been absent so long and am now bombarding you with comments. 🙂
bluebrightly
July 24, 2018 at 11:27 AM
Bombard away:
You make my day.
Steve Schwartzman
July 24, 2018 at 2:25 PM