#bladdernut

Collected on this Day in 1940

This specimen was collected on May 29, 1940 by Leroy Henry along Pine Creek, north of Wildwood outside of Pittsburgh. Leroy Henry was a mycologist (studied fungi) and botanist who was curator at Carnegie Museum from 1937-1973.

Aptly called “bladdernut” (Staphylea trifolia), this charismatic native understory shrub produces clusters of white flowers in the spring. These dangling flowers develop into striking bladder-like fruit. In each “bladder” pouch are seeds. These fruit often persist through fall and some linger through winter, though the plant is leafless.

Bladdernut has a wide range across eastern North America, and can be found in relatively undisturbed forests in our area, often forming thickets.

Find this specimen here.

Check back for more! Botanists at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History share digital specimens from the herbarium on dates they were collected. They are in the midst of a three- year project to digitize nearly 190,000 plant specimens collected in the region, making images and other data publicly available online. This effort is part of the Mid-Atlantic Megalopolis Project (mamdigitization.org), a network of thirteen herbaria spanning the densely populated urban corridor from Washington, D.C. to New York City to achieve a greater understanding of our urban areas, including the unique industrial and environmental history of the greater Pittsburgh region. This project is made possible by the National Science Foundation under grant no. 1801022.

Plant of the Day

Saturday 22 April 2017

The upright, deciduous shrub Staphylea colchica (bladdernut) has been flowering for a month with small, white, fragrant, bell-shaped flowers in hanging clusters. In the summer there will be large, greenish-white, inflated fruit. This plant is easy to grow in any moist, well-drained soil in sun or semi-shade. I had a pink cultivar as 'Plant of the Day' on Sunday 26 March 2017 so that indicates how long they can be flowering.

The not-so-elegantly named bladder nut tree 🌿

Plant of the Day

Sunday 26 March 2017

From a distance I thought this was a flowering cherry but on closer inspection it was the beautiful Staphylea holocarpa 'Rosea' (bladdernut). This deciduous plant once established makes a large branching shrub or small tree. It has showy, fragrant, pale pink bell-shaped flowers, in nodding groups that appear before the bronze young leaves, and followed by greenish-white bladder like fruit. I think we should plant more of these!

Located approximately 3 miles (5 km) southwest of Tetbury, Gloucestershire, Westonbirt, The National Arboretum is a picturesque arboretum managed by Forestry England. It forms part of the Westonbirt House estate established during the height of Victorian plant hunting in the mid-19th century. The arboretum is listed as Grade I on the Register of Historic Parks and Gardens of special historic…