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• News and Almanac"News and Almanac" for the February 2002 Missouri Conservationist.
• Bur OakAmong the many majestic American oaks with legendary and historic value, McBaine, Missouri's state champion bur oak has a 91-inch-diameter trunk, is over three hundred years old, and survived the flood of 1993. Recently, specialists have been fertilizing and aerating its soil, carefully pruning it, and taking twig samples in order to preserve its extraordinary genetic line.
• Black LocustThis tree, a member of the bean family, is easy to appreciate in May and June, when its showy white clusters of flowers perfume the breeze with their sweet smell. Bees like the flowers, too. Many beekeepers deem black-locust honey the best of honeys, while others classify it as toxic to humans.
• Canadian HemlockAlso called eastern hemlock, this tree is encountered only in landscaping in our state. But based on one instance in Oregon County, we know it can reproduce and spread here on its own. But if you find it on a hike, it was almost certainly planted there at some point. Look around for a cistern, old home foundation and other persisting garden plants nearby.
• Black OakFamed botanical author Donald Culross Peattie admitted black oak, when judged by ornamental and lumbering value, lacks "benign grace" and "seems to have few civic or domestic associations." But, he pointed out, "as a forest tree, as part of the hard, untamed, original sylva, it has a rough, unbending grandeur of its own."