The Sex Lives of Trees.

6-4-22 SHORT HILLS: Who says garden reporting isn’t titillating? We have a sex orgy involving thousands happening in the yard right now.

Holly trees are either male or female as and the gender can be seen in the flowers. Since we have at least a dozen English hollies, mostly volunteers from the original three in the yard. Those three, two females and one male, are all forty to fifty feet tall, and the females are usually covered with red berries in November. Last year a flock of twenty or so robins landed on one while migrating and ate every berry. That’s what they’re for. The pollinating requires bugs, mostly bees to go from tree to tree. I have shown these flowers every year, this year you, dear reader, will have to identify which is which.

Speaking of robins, we have two nesting very close to the house. The one that I can look down into from upstairs has two blue/green eggs.

New blooms: mock orange, Stewartia.

One of the holly trees. Is it male or female?

The other holly sex, which?

A very nice construction with two eggs in a yew tree next to the front door.

The same nest with an incubating bird.

The other nest close to the den door over the terrace.