The Bonus Tree

Often when one transplants a plant from one garden to another you get a few bonus plants, little hitchhikers that have fastened themselves onto the main plant.

Usually these bonus plants are other perennials that you can ease away from it's temporary home and lovingly transplant into a new space where it can feel free to grow and spread.

The bonus plants are usually the fast growers and spreaders, things like yarrow, or daisies or corn flowers. Even the little jumping jack - the first to bring welcome color to the spring landscape hitchhikes on a transplanted plant then proceeds to become an aggressive, annoying guest - popping up everywhere whether you want her around or not!.

Often they are things like gout weed, or other invasive ground covers, or in the case of my lovely miniture yellow irises - a whole lawn takes up residence and in those cases it is sometimes just best to try to get every last bit of the freeloader out (not the easiest task) and into the compost heap (as will be happening to the grass in the iris once the blooms have faded).

Sometimes two of the more invasive perennials take up residence together - Yarrow and Cornflower - sort of like peas in a pod!

Sometimes you find a bonus like a little lupin growing in the iris clump. This little hitchhiker will have to wait for the iris to be divided later in the year before he earns a permanent home.

And sometimes, you find a tiny, tiny sprout of some tree or shrub that is a mystery. Such is the case of our "bonus" tree.

This little tree came into our garden one year ago on one of the plants transplanted from Mom's garden. It was only about 3" tall and had about three leaves and it's trunk measured only fractions of an inch around. It was so tiny, it would have been easy to miss in the haste of getting the transplanted perennials into the ground. Even then, given the red color, we knew it was one of the good "bonus" plants so we slipped it into some soil, tied it to a garden stake (mostly so we didn't inadvertently hoe it out on a rambuncious weeding rampage) and kept it watered.

That mystery tree is now about 2 1/2 feet tall and growing well. It has definitely found it's permant home - right where we planted it a year ago.

But what is this mystery tree - Mom had lots of fruit trees and shrubs in her yard so we are thinking it is the child of one of those. We have an apple tree planted this year and the colors of the leaves are much the same although shaped slightly differently.

Unless someone can identify this lovely bonus plant, it shall remain the mystery tree until such time as it decides it is time to let us know it's name through it's blossoms, or fruit.

Until then, we will watch it grow, fertilize and water and lovingly take care of our "bonus tree".