Boston Flora

Tag: Birch Trees

  • Tuesday, October 2, 6:30 pm – 8:00 pm – Birch: More than Meets the Eye

    White-barked birches hybridize freely, suggesting that current species are too narrowly defined. Even the well-known common native North American paper-bark or canoe birch (Betula papyrifera) causes consternation. Birch expert Hugh McAllister of University of Liverpool and Ness Botanic Garden will explain a bit about the white-barked birches’ propensity to cross-pollinate and thus confound taxonomists, on Tuesday, October 2, from 6:30 – 8 at the Hunnewell Building of the Arnold Arboretum. He will discuss birch distribution around the world while showing images of his research travels and herbarium specimens and posing some as-of-yet unanswered questions that keep this botanist awake at night. Free, but registration requested at www.arboretum.harvard.edu.

  • Thursday, August 13, 6:30 – 8 pm – A Forest in Mind: Mixed-Media Paintings by Terry Boutelle

    Come to the Hunnewell Building Lecture Hall at the Arnold Arboretum in Jamaica Plain  at 6:30 on Thursday, August 13 for a conversation with artist Terry Boutelle.  Terry Boutelle’s vision of trees and forests is shaped by memory, meditation, and imagination. Initially inspired by birch trees in the Arboretum, Boutelle has moved beyond realism into psychological and emotional realms. Using mixed media such as acrylic, pastel, wax, and plaster, and often incorporating natural objects such as leaves, twigs, and seeds, she creates paintings that are at times richly textured and at other times, smooth and veiled. Her images evoke mystery and yearning for things we cannot quite grasp.

    Largely self-taught, Terry Boutelle has also studied at the Fine Arts Work Center, Massachusetts College of Art, and the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. She is the current president of the Jamaica Plain Artists Association and a painting instructor at the Eliot School of Fine and Applied Arts.  For more information, log on to www.arboretum.harvard.edu.  The exhibition will be on view through September 13, 2009.

    Winter Solitaire