Discussion

The syllabus for this week calls for both winter trees (fuyu no ki 冬の木) and bare trees (hadaka no ki 裸の木), but there is considerable overlap between the two categories. Winter trees refers to any tree in the winter time. These could be bare trees because many trees shed their foliage in the winter. They could also be connifers like pines, firs, etc. that are green year round. In paintings, the way you can tell if connifers are winter trees depends on other elements in the picture. Snow is a good tipoff. So is the presence of bare trees in the same scene. Some animals have summer coats and winter coats. Some reindeer have glowing red noses around a week before New Years Day. People may be wearing heavy clothing, carrying skis, etc.

Bare trees is a subset of winter trees, focusing solely on trees that have lost their leaves for the season.

For my painting subject this week, I chose to feature three different types of bare trees in the same scene; horse chestnut, birch, and weeping willow.

Horse Chestnut (tochi no ki)

The Latin name for the horse chestnut tree is Aesculus hippocastanum. Besides horse chestnut, common names for it are buckeye, conker tree, or Spanish chestnut. It is a large tree, growing as tall as 128 feet. It is a spreading tree in the tree form categories. The picture below shows the largest and oldest horse chestnut tree in the world. A measurement in 1780 gave a circumfrence of 190 feet.

Nobody knows exactly how old it is, but estimates of at least 4,000 years have been made. It is on the island of Sicily a few miles away from Mt. Etna which regularly enriches the soil in the area with ash falls. It is called the 100-Horse Chestnut because of a reputed event in the 13th century. Queen Joanna of Aragon was caught in a thunderstorm nearby. She and her entire retinue of 100 mounted horsemen and retainers were able to shelter under it.

The leaves of the horse chestnut are palmate with 5 to 7 leaflets, each of which is 5 to 12 inches long, making the whole leaf as much as 24 inches across.

Its flowers are usually white with yellow to pink blotches at the base of the petals. They grow in 4 to 12 inch clusters of 20 to 50 flowers each.

1 to 5 fruit grow from each cluster. They have green spiky shells, usually with one nut-like seed called a conker or horse-chestnut.

Here is a picture of the 100-Horse Chestnut with all its leaves.

White Birch (shirakaba)

There are several types birch tree distinguished by the color of its bark, though other characterists vary, too. The most popular is the white birch (Latin: Betula papyrifera), also called the paper birch or canoe birch. White birches typically grow to 66 feet with 1 foot diameter trunks, but in exceptional instances have been known to grow to 130 feet tall with a 30 inch diameter trunk.

The white birch's pyramidal shape is easy to see in these young examples.

This photo shows why it is often called a white birch.

Its bark grows in layers, peals easily, and is water proof. These characteristics made it useful as a substitute for paper by early American colonialists and to make birch bark canoes by American Indians. The bark's color turns white at about three years old.

White birch leaves are dark green and smooth on the upper surface. They are alternately arranged on the stems, oval to triangular in shape, and are 2 to 4 inches wide. Leaves turn a bright yellow in the fall.

Birches grow catkins; long slim clusters of tiny flowers. The same tree will have both male and female catkins; i.e. it is monoecious. Pollination is most commonly wind blown.

The white birch is ideal for bonsai.

Weeping Willow (shidare yanagi)

Weeping willows (Latin = Salix babylonica) are native to dry areas of northern China. Attractive trees, they were trade items on the Silk Road all the way to Europe. There are more than 400 species of willow trees. Weeping willows grow from 45 to 70 feet tall. Their width can equal their height. 

Leaves hang in clusters.

Willows have catkins, too, but willows are dioecious rather than monoecious. In other words a weeping willow will be either a male or female tree, not both.

Weeping willows are the easiest of this week's tree subjects to find in Japanese art. This ukiyo-e picture by Ando Hiroshige (1797-1858) below is from his 100 Famous Views of Edo series.

Here are two more images of weeping willows used to decorate inrō.

The second image shows a more complete image of an inrō.

An inrō is what passed for pockets in men's kimonos in feudal Japan. they were little sectioned boxes that contained miscellaneous items from coins to sewing implements to medicine. They would hang from a cord wrapped around the obi, the sash that held kimonos together. At the other end of the cord would be a netsuke, often a carved object with a hole to thread the cord through so that the whole affair wouldn't slip away.

Here is a picture of a netsuke.

There are countless netsuke designs. There are lots of avid netsuke collectors today, too. The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) has many hundred of them on display in their Japanese Pavilion. It is worth a trip to Los Angeles (post-pandemic, of course) to see them.