Dogwoods and Jack-in-the-Pulpits at Brighton Dam Azalea Garden

Azaleas are not the only plants I look for at Brighton Dam Azalea Garden. The dogwoods and jack-in-the-pulpits are blooms at the same time. The dogwoods are understory trees. The older ones that are the understory to the big oaks and tulip poplars are native dogwoods – white with notches on the outer edged of the ‘petals’.

Newer hybrid dogwoods are planted in the same area as the new hybrid azaleas in an area to the left of the garden entrance. There are white ones – without a notch…and pink ones. They are easier to photograph because the trees are smaller and more flowers are at eye level.

Jack-in-the-Pulpits are harder to notice because the flowers are almost the same color as the leaves. See if you can see the flowers before scrolling down to see more enlarged views. One of the enlarged views has a lot of aphids (yellow).

Young Oaks at Brighton Dam Azalea Garden

There lots of big oak and tulip poplar trees at Brighton Dam Azalea Garden that provide the dappled environment that azaleas need. The surprise for me this time was the large number of smaller oak trees. There must have been a large crop of acorns in the past few years that the squirrels planted and forgot and the result were a group of foot high oaks with tehri leaves unfurling. The leaves of one were still wrinkled and red.

Another was a little further along and the leaves are looking more like oak leaves (red oak probably).

I wish there was a stand of young oaks like this to show the pre-schoolers when they come for a Nature Tales field trip and we talk about the life cycle trees.

The is such a great time of year to see how trees come bare from the bare branches of winter – and the small trees are much easier to observe than the giant trees with their branches so far above eye level.

There is an art like quality to the unfurling of leaves as well…I could resist these very young leaves emerging from the bud.

Azaleas!

We visited Brighton Dam Azalea Garden yesterday morning. it was the perfect day to go: cool (not cold) and dry (the day before was rainy and the forecast for the day following was for more rain). We were early enough that it was not crowded. The garden is near the dam that creates the Triadelphia Reservoir between Howard and Montgomery Counties in Maryland. I read an article from back in March that said the lake was at 49% of capacity because of a drought over the past 6 months for our part of Maryland.  Looking past this grouping of azaleas, it’s obvious that the lake is low.

The azaleas are underneath large trees – with a few understory dogwoods. I experimented with the ‘fisheye’ setting on my camera for this shot.

The most prevalent colors of azaleas are pink, white and red/magenta…with a few light purple mixed in.

The pink ones seemed to draw my attention the most. Many of them had water droplets on them.

The magenta color almost gets too intense!

There are some newer plantings that are recent hybrids that are orange-yellow. The flowers are clumped and even the buds are worth a closer look.

But my favorite picture of the azaleas was of white flowers. What’s not to like about white flowers with water droplets and a black background!

Tomorrow I’ll share some images of oak seedlings that were coming up in the garden.