Good old college try!

  It is easy to be misled by those who think they are authorities on just about everything.  A few years back, a tree bloomed in the swamp behind the house.  A new pathway had just been cleared when the blooms were discovered so the tree was left intact.  Somewhere in the back of my mind, I remembered that there was a so-called botanist that was a family member.  Aha!  A botanist should definitely be able to identify a tree by photos of the leaves, bark and bloom.  Throw in the location, the soil conditions and time of blooming and it should be an easy task.  My "botanist" friend eagerly gave me an identity and I accepted it as fact.  Big mistake!  Apparently botanists are not always correct but, for years, I firmly believed the answer given.  The tree sat with the misnomer of "Virginia Sweetspire".  

  Now just through browsing the Internet for the identity of yet another tree, I stumbled across my "fake" sweetspire!  It is not sweetspire at all!  The tree in question now has an accurate name strictly due to the Mississippi State University website.  I suppose I should have known from the get-go that a Mississippi university would know far better about the trees in the state than some out-of-state botanist.  (In all fairness here, perhaps my friend just glanced at the photos and took a wild guess as he did not wish to delve into a tree not native to his area.  Understandable, I guess...maybe.  But I sure wish he would have just said that he did not know instead of giving me false information.)

  The true identity of my tree is Swamp Cyrilla!  I am just about as happy as a honeybee in a daisy garden with that news!  Swamp Cyrilla is an attractive tree sort of on the smallish side but it drapes beautifully over the path.  It has the long, dangling racemes that are creamy white and are obviously highly addictive for bees!  Thousands of honeybees were buzzing the blooms today and according to the MSU website, the honey made from nectar of the Swamp Cyrilla is exceptional.  I guess I need to find that beehive!  Still, it confuses me how a botanist can be oh, so wrong about a tree when they have access to the material needed to make an identity.  I do believe I shall stick with the university's information if I need another tree's name.