The Forgotten Flower

The tuliptree (Liriodendon tulipifera) has been blooming for a couple weeks now, but who'd have known? The flowers are found so high in this majestic tree that they are usually noticed only when they begin to fall down.

Honeybees, I'm sure, have noticed; it's reputed to be a good source of nectar for them. Lots of other wildlife depends on the seeds when they form. The leaves are food for the caterpillars of tiger swallowtail butterflies.

Also called yellow poplar, tuliptree is in the Magnolia family, not related to other poplars. Straight and tall, tuliptree is an early successional species, one that gets established when a forest is young, and eventually gives way to oaks and others. Native Americans, I've read, made the light trunks into dugout canoes.