Today. Right now. Or within the next two weeks or so (early August), we have a couple of marvelous examples of Malvaceae (the mallow family) in bloom for you to examine and enjoy at Hoyt Arboretum! The Malvaceae includes well-known showy flowers such as hibiscus, hollyhocks, and checkerblooms, a few weedy members like velvetleaf and … Read more
Why can’t we just use common names for all plants? Wait a minute… We often do use common names for plants here at Hoyt Arboretum! If you are a hiker, gardener, or just a general lover of plants, using common names for most plants is totally fine and appropriate. Really, there is no plant shaming … Read more
…and how to make your own pressed flowers and leaves at home! At Hoyt Arboretum, we make several hundred pressed and dried plant specimens every year to scientifically document and validate our tree collection. Many of the larger botanic gardens and arboreta, as well as most land-grant universities, have dried plant collections to record the … Read more
Late spring is a perfect time to visit Hoyt Arboretum to see many of our glorious dogwoods! The Arboretum has over 70 different species, varieties, or cultivars of dogwoods, with most of them located in the Dogwood Section along the north end and back edge of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. First off, what is a … Read more
Hoyt Arboretum is known for trees, not orchids. We don’t have fancy greenhouses to grow tropical epiphytic orchids. Nor do we have deep, complex older-growth forests that might have our native terrestrial orchids, such as calypso orchids (Calypso bulbosa), coralroots (Corallorhiza spp.), or twayblades (Neottia spp.). The grounds of Hoyt Arboretum, however, do have three … Read more