Thought you might be interested and seeing what I look like although I had no idea he would be taking pics of me under the tulip tree.
the article is very well written and it does have lots of info the tulip tree in general but it is mostly about the importance of trees and plants in our environment for beauty and for the birds and for the pollinators..

http://eedition.lucknowsentine...

Nice to "meet" you and read this informative article. I can think of a number of tulip trees in my town including at my former place of employment. They are not real common but apparently they do well here in the Willamette Valley.

Keep up your good work!

Nice article feature. You look comfy under that nice tree. Trees in general
do so much for us. Enjoy that tulip tree and all your other trees.

Nice Pat!

Great article. It's very nice to see you and also get noted for your efforts to inform people about this tree and trees in general. Trees are so beautiful and vital.

Congratulations, Pat. It's good to put a face to the name and to see your efforts producing fruit.

Well so far only one pod has dropped so that is a good sign. The ones that fall have no fertilization at all and are not viable....
with this many pods still up the tree hopefully it will become a seed tree for some other tulip trees...
the seeds are getting donated to conservation at the end of August or so and then to the nursery and then planted out as young trees.

The hope is that since the mother tree has survived all the elements for the 100 years the young ones can too.
This tree normally does not like cold or wind.
It survived a winter here at -40F for a number of days straight the other year
and also a big wind storm that took out many mature trees here last year........

I had an arborist come and give the tree its first hair cut that it has every got this spring when the snow was still flying. There were a family of great horned owls living in the natural cavity in the tree. they all fledged all 5 of them.

Most of the flowers are on the top of the tree and since we are at least 70 feet up there...........not sure how the get the pods down yet......but the arborist is doing the job for free for conservation.

there are no other tulip trees around the area in this zone.............so here to hoping all this works out. The tree has produced some small ones near the bottom the trunk. some might be suckers but some might not be. That will be decided at the end of August with the arborist. if there are some to be planted that are ok they will be planted in important places in town here.

out of 2500 hundred people that live here only a few people have seen it bloom and it gets 1000's of flowers each year...... We need to learn to look up as a society.........

flowers are my passion. Lilies the far most of all of them and the tulip tree is very important me too

I had a tulip tree in Oregon, had our own private arboretum actually. There are some tulip trees here in Eastern WA, but young still so I do not know how they will do. There is an arboretum here but a rather sad imitation compared to what is on the good side of the cascades. there are some young Giant sequoia here too, not sure how long they will last either.
Tulip trees are great for taller houses, you can get a good view of the blooms from upstairs!

My tulip tree is 26 years old here in zone 4, Minnesota. The coldest it has seen is minus 36°F (-38°C). It has been blooming now for eight years. The trees are rare here, too, although the Minnesota Arboretum ten miles away has a couple. I do get seedlings that come up in the lawn and lightly mulched areas. Of course, if you spray or treat your lawn for weeds, you would be killing the tulip tree seedlings, too. They don't look like tulip trees when they are small, and if you mow your lawn regularly as a normal person would, it's likely you would never see them.

Do you think that possibly you have a hybrid Rick I wander. The only reason that I am saying that is that they usually take 50 plus years to bloom the first time and live to be well over 250 years some of them and longer. I know the hybrid that is mixed with the popular tree and looks the same as a tulip tree does will bloom in 10 years if you are lucky.......
This one here bloomed on it 50th birthday...........

the only way they would know for sure here is to do DNA testing on the tree to see if is species or hybrid but the way it is blooming they say species..........

I have seen some hybrid trees that are grafted and to be honest a far better way to appreciate the tree is for it to bloom sooner.

Since it is a bendable hardwood and also very important to bees and other animals that feed on the pods.........they want them to live out a long life I guess.......and going with the species like the one at the house here.

So much of this to a beginner person is way over my head..........lol.

In order for the tree to be considered a true seed tree they would prefer two of them close together so they could pollinate between the 2 trees instead of just self pollination but it is looking like there is no other tulip tree for miles around here..........although I have some young ones that I am hoping at the bottom of the tree are not just from the root system and can be planted out somewhere.....

How did the "50 years to bloom" information come about? Perhaps it is true with Canadian trees? Documentation fills credible books and online sources that consistently corroborate 15-20 years to bloom (example: Woody Plant Seed Manual U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service p. 674).

50 Years seems a few decades off, although it may depend on your climate. In western OR the slowest tree I ever grew (private arboretum remember) took about 12 years, Pawpaw, in a not very warm spot, and no water the first few (plants can be produced with no irrigation there). That was from seed started in a greenhouse or it would have been longer.