Finally, the High Line

I visited the High Line shortly after it opened in June. I went once again towards the end of summer, but both trips were spontaneous and I was camara-less. Yesterday I was determined to get some pictures of this new park, designed by a team led by landscape architects Field Operations, collaborating with Diller Scofidio (architecture), L'Observatoire International (lighting) and a slew of other consultants. For the purposes of this blog, of course, I was mostly interested in seeing Piet Oudolf's work -- he did the planting design.

And when I arrived at the park yesterday, I realized that it made perfect sense for me to delay so long in taking some photos. This is the time of year where Oudolf's work starts to galvanize into the painterly winter landscapes for which he's best known. Oudolf's work has always celebrated how plants look in the winter, rather than ignore this season altogether. He focuses on grasses and plants with distinctive, persistent seed heads.

Tomorrow or Wednesday I will show some more general shots of the park, then after Thanksgiving, we'll look at some of the plant species on display.

Agave Americana

When I posted about Brugmansia I mentioned that the horticulturist at Central Park Zoo likes to experiment with marginally hardy plant materials. Agave americana is another plant in this category.

Agave americana is also called century plant, because this plant only blooms every ten years or so, and we all like a little hyperbole. When the plant does bloom it sends a very tall stalk into the air, high enough above the ground to protect the blossom from terrestrial predators. After the plant blooms, it dies.

If one were to cut the bloom's stem before the flower had opened, one could collect a sap - called agua miel (honey water) - ferment it and create a drink called pulque. Agave americana's cousin, Agave tequilana is of course responsible for a drink called tequila.

Cherries

I inevitably overlook cherry trees (Prunus sp.). I don't know why. In the spring, I look forward to the crabapples, but then am always insensibly surprised by how beautiful cherries are in the spring.

I've mentioned them in passing once and mused on the poor use of the potentially beautiful weeping variety, but I've never acknowledged the lovely fall color they have.


The above is taken outside of the Stuyvesant town apartments - but all around the city I have noticed how lovely cherries look this time of year. The fiery oranges and sunburst yellows contrast well with the trees' dark bark and the evergreen Pachysandra beneath.


Cherries area always easy to spot, even in the winter. They are a coarse-limbed tree with a dark brown - almost black - bark with a rosy pink undertone. Of course, more notable than the color is the bark's smoothness, punctuated with lenticels. (Lenticels are specialized 'pores' in the bark that aid in gas exchange.) The easy way to describe cherry bark is to say it looks like Shantung or raw silk.



But if you weren't convinced you had encountered a cherry, and the leaves were still on the tree, you could look for the small 'pimple' at the base of the leaf's petiole. That is typical to Prunus.




I haven't used a species name in this post, primarily because cherries are so often hybridized. This plant is most likely a Prunus serrulata, but it could be a hybrid of several species.

290 Mulberry

290 Mulberry is a condo that's been under construction for some time in Nolita. It looks like construction is pretty close to being wrapped up.

In the meantime, someone's having some fun with the building by staging a light show with the empty rooms.

Apologies in advance for the fact that the whole video ought to be rotated 90°!