My recent request to friends for photos and statements about favorite trees brought this wonderfully welcome response from Barbara Hubschman Gold. Her comments are in italics below.
I drew a smoke bush at a young age and since wasn’t sure whether it was real or a product of childhood imagination. It was enchanting and dearly loved! Imagine my excitement when I began gardening more than 30 years ago and found it – Cotinus! (also called smoketree or smoke bush) This is a marvelous specimen from Central Park, NYC. (photo above)
“The flowers are clustered in a large open terminal panicles 15–30 cm long with a fluffy grayish-buff appearance resembling a cloud of smoke over the plant, from which the name derives.”(quote from the Wikipedia information for Cotinus)
Barb’s story prompted me to consider my own fascination with smoke bushes in the Arnold Arboretum, suggested by four photos below:
The final photo is from Central Park with a reflective quote from Barb:
Through the years before I determined it was real, an image of one – my own drawing? – would come to mind. Kind of a mystery hanging – not urgent enough to be solved. And then, I must have come across it in the years of obsessive garden creation. Such pleasure to discover it was real!!
Pleasures of Plants 