Not About The Bike

Riding our bikes can be both beautiful and fully consuming, so best to leave time for other pursuits in order to round out one's interests. In our family, vacations become field trips, expeditions and plant safaris that extend throughout Western North America. Our yard and nursery includes exotic and native plants from the Colorado Plateau, Great Basin, Mojave Desert, Sonoran Desert, Chihuahuan Desert, Rocky Mountains, Sierra Nevada and Sierra Madre. So whenever we travel, we're on the lookout for the unusual. While recently in Portland we visited Hoyt Arboretum, and this is what we found.
*Plant portraits by Lisa Bourey

Monkey Puzzle Tree

or Araucaria araucana

This tree looks like it could kick your arse!

The Monkey Puzzle tree is native to central Chile and west central Argentina, and is the national tree of Chile. Because of this species' great age it is often described as a living fossil.

Weeping Giant Redwood

Sequoiadendron giganteum 'Pendulum'

Weeping White Pine

Fijian Cypress

Fokienia hodginsii is an extremely rare evergreen tree that is native from southeastern China to Northern Vietnam, west central Vietnam and west to northern Laos. Another living fossil.