1)   Bright Green Maples
Even the common color of green inspires hope and energy in spring. Here are two exceptional examples:

 Acer palmatum ‘Shishigashira’, known as the Lion’s Mane maple, was so named for the curled, bunched up leaves at the ends of short, stout stems.
 Acer japonicum ‘Ed Wood’, located in the Signature Bed at the Graham Visitor Center, sports exceptionally robust foliage for a blast of color in both the spring and autumn. 

Let’s dip our toes into the bizarre world of lichens! Lichens are those interesting, colorful, strange little growths found on trees and stones that are commonly mistaken for moss. Lichens and mosses can certainly grow together and often do, but they are far from the same thing. These underappreciated epiphytes are actually not even plants at all. They are a symbiotic combination of fungi and algae which form an estimated 3,600 (and counting) different species of lichen throughout North America. 

This excruciatingly rare plant has been documented in only one place: along a basalt ridgetop at the Hanford Reach National Monument.

Horsetail, a plant that Seattle area gardeners love to hate. Have it in your garden? You have likely been fighting it for years. But this plant is more than just a weed. Field horsetail, Equisetum arvense, is a tenacious perennial native to the temperate and arctic regions across the northern hemisphere, including the Pacific Northwest.
In early spring I often encounter visitors wondering about the otherworldly-looking reproductive stems of field horsetail. 

Ferns are unique in that they do not flower or produce seeds, but instead reproduce vegetatively or through spores. If you’ve ever seen dark brown dots on the bottom of a fern frond – those are spores! Spores are most often found on the underside of fronds in clusters called sori.
1)  Woodwardia fimbriata                                                           Giant Chain Fern

This species is the largest fern native to North America and is found on the coast in moist coniferous forests from British Columbia to Baja California. 

University of Washington Bothell (UWB) and the University of Washington Botanic Gardens (UWBG) at the Washington Park Arboretum (WPA) partnered this Winter quarter with two community based learning and research BES 495 student interns. Here are their BES 495 project blogs:
Planting Projects at WPA by Jessica Rouhana, BS in Conservation and Restoration Science 
Two projects were focused on: Rhododendron Glen and the Lightning Tree. 

The term ‘living fossil’ was coined by Charles Darwin in his book, Origin of Species in 1859. Although definitions can vary, a living fossil generally refers to an organism that has remained in the fossil record for an unusually long time span with seemingly very little change. These organisms are fascinating case studies in plant evolution. Here are some of the living fossil plants that can be found in the Arboretum:
1)   Taiwania cryptomerioides                                                         Coffin Tree

This coniferous tree species is native to eastern Asia and is the only surviving member of its genus, descending from the middle Jurassic Period. 

Ten species of hemlock (Tsuga) are found across North America and Asia. When young, all species have a tell-tale drooping top or leader. The largest species, Western Hemlock (Tsuga heterophylla), is a common forest tree in the lowland Northwest. A popular landscape tree, Mountain Hemlock (Tsuga mertensiana) is native to higher elevation forests of the Northwest. Check out some of the other hemlocks in the Arboretum collection! 

1)   Betula nigra                                                                                   River Birch

Native to the eastern U.S., B. nigra typically inhabits the banks of ponds and waterways, often where the ground is inundated for several weeks at a time.
In stark contrast to other white-barked species, trunks of B. nigra are often forked very low and are covered with large flakes of curling, blackish bark.
This tree can be found along Arboretum Creek, just east of parking lot #19 (the ‘Birch’ lot). 

The species of Rhododendron in the subsection Grandia are all native to southeast Asia, though they blend into our PNW conifer and mixed forests magically. Now is an excellent time to come visit these amazing plants in the Washington Park Arboretum before the distraction of so much color enters the world.