Tuliptree flower (by Les Line)
The spring tulips in our garden are but a memory as we enter June, but the tulips that will soon appear high on the relatively young tree by the steps to our door surpass in size and form any blossoms created in Dutch fields. They are the greenish-orange flowers of the tuliptree, also known as the yellow poplar although the species actually belongs in the magnolia family. Four inches across, these arboreal tulips produce copious amounts of nectar to pleasure neighborhood bees, and cone-like fruit whose winged seeds feed quail, cardinals, rabbits and squirrels. Even the massive leaves have a tulip shape, making it one of the more easily identified trees in eastern hardwood forests.
Tuliptrees especially thrive in the rich, moist soil of the lower Ohio Valley and in sheltered coves in the southern Appalachians, where they may reach a height of 150 feet or more with a trunk diameter of 8 to 10 feet. The creamy-white wood is lightweight and easily worked, and it's said that Daniel Boone made a 60-foot-long canoe from a tuliptree log. Primary uses for the wood in historic times, before southern forests were ravaged by loggers, included the manufacture of pipe organs, while the arrow-straight trunks were used for the masts of sailing ships.
Tuliptrees are popular shade trees, producing flowers at an age of 15 to 20 years, but you may have to search the crown with binoculars to find them. This photograph, on the other hand, was taken at a massive old tree in saxophonist Paul Winter's dooryard in northwest Connecticut, where sprawling limbs close to the ground were heavily laden with the unusual and colorful blossoms.