Spring is not typically known for its subtlety around these parts, but upon its early awakening many plants warrant a closer look. Enjoy!
1)  Acer palmatum ‘Katsura’                     Katsura Maple

One of the first Japanese maples to leaf out each spring. The small, five-lobed leaves emerge pale yellow-orange, with brighter orange margins.
Found in the semi-dwarf group of Japanese maples.
Specimen 19-10*A is located in grid 30-4E. 

Almost no one is aware that the Washington Park Arboretum is the location of two kames. “Kames, what is that?” everyone asks. Wikipedia tells us that “a kame is a geomorphological feature, an irregularly shaped hill or mound composed of sand, gravel and till that accumulates in a depression on a retreating glacier.”
Located just east of Lake Washington Boulevard E. 

The Arboretum Loop Trail is a jewel of the master plan approved in 2001.

Kirsten is a Volunteer at the Elisabeth C. Miller Library.  She grew up in Denmark near Copenhagen and relocated to the Seattle area in October of 2011.  Kirsten likes to garden, knit, and sing in her free time.
She has a BS in biochemistry and biology and a BS in library and information science.  Her favorite classes in college were evolution and classification of higher plants, native plant identification, and information retrieval.  

As part of her UW senior capstone project, student farmer Mallory Culbertson has been working hard to bring chickens to the UW Farm! We hope to have a flock of feathered friends in 2017 but in the meantime, check out this informative Chicken Keeping Handbook Mallory created for other student farmers.
If you’d like to learn more, you can view her project’s annotated bibliography HERE. 

Join us on April 7 at the Elisabeth C. Miller Botanical Garden for a tour of the lovely spring ephemerals.

Daniel Sorensen is a graduate student at the UW School of Environmental and Forest Sciences, working in the lab of UW Botanic Gardens Director, Sarah Reichard, and researching the risk of invasion across Washington and Oregon of 2 two closely related grasses in the genus Cortaderia – pampas grass and jubata grass. Daniel works as the Integrated Pest Management (IPM) and Sustainability Coordinator for UW Grounds Management, and in that role he helps manage invasive species in the Union Bay Natural Area along with UW Botanic Gardens staff.  

SkyRoot Farm has been approved by the State of Washington to host (2) official farm interns on our farm this summer! SkyRoot is an integrated vegetable farm located on Whidbey Island in the Puget Sound. The 20 acre farm is an active site of restoration agriculture – a form of agriculture that works to restore both ecological function as well as food production to a farm system. 

Blooming now in the arboretum are several large arrays of blue flowered ground covers in the Borage family. They make a stunning effect, especially if you adore carpets of little blue flowers as I do.
There are 146 genera in this family with roughly 2000 species including garden favorites such as Star Flower, Borage, and Forget-Me-Nots, Myosotis, which are annuals and can be grown in the sun. 

Rebecca Alexander is the Plant Answer Line librarian in the Elisabeth C. Miller Library. In addition to providing reference services, she works on acquisitions, cataloging, and a wide assortment of tasks including editing Miller Library and other publications, and updating the library’s database of questions and answers.
Rebecca grew up in Seattle and spent some of her early childhood years living near the current site of the Douglas greenhouses at the Center for Urban Horticulture.