Self-Guided Tour: Winter 2024

A Winter Meander in the Sino-Himalayan

Contributors:  VanDusen Volunteer Sunday Guides

Welcome to VanDusen Garden in winter.  Life remains abundant and busy in this season of change. Fruits of fall persist while plump buds herald the coming of spring. Please take a Garden map to guide you on this tour into the Sino-Himalayan Garden. Follow the directional arrows and numbered signs.

To begin, exit left from the plaza, head across the bridge and to the junction before the low stone wall at the Rose Garden. Go left, then curve right past two service gates, through a crossroads and up the Rhododendron Walk. The first four numbered stops will all be on the right. Look for the first, a single-trunked evergreen tree.

1 – yuzuri-ha (Daphniphyllum macropodum) has evergreen, daphne-like leaves (the Greek word phyllon means “leaf”) arranged in whorls. Each leaf has a stout pink stalk (makros means “large” and podos means “stalk”). The species is dioecious with male and female flowers borne on separate plants. Only female plants bear fruit. Introduced to horticulture in 1879 by Charles Maries, this relict species, once more widespread, has fossil pollen evidence dating it to the middle Miocene in Austria. Its remnant populations are now restricted to east Asia. Further uphill, look right for an evergreen tree beside a bench a few steps off the path.

2 – Magnolia cavaleriei var. platypetala, an evergreen magnolia from southern China that blooms in spring with fragrant white blooms. It was named for a French missionary Pierre Cavalerie who collected plants in China from late 1800s to early 1900s. Return to the path and continue on. 

3 – Chinese witch hazel (Hamamelis mollis) blooms in late winter on leafless branches, unlike the eastern North American species (Hamamelis virginiana) that blooms in fall while still in leaf. Chinese witch hazel’s fragrant filamentous yellow flowers attract foraging honeybees on warm winter days. This species is parent to several witch hazel hybrids. Its Latin name name mollis means ‘soft’, referring to the felt-like softness of its leaves.

4 – Japanese white pine (Pinus parviflora ‘Tempelhof’), a cultivar of a 5-needle white pine native to Japan and Korea, was selected in 1969 at an arboretum near Doorn, Netherlands, for its attractive bluish foliage, compact form and long-lasting cones. Curve right through the intersection, then take the right fork of the path ahead. Stop at a bench on the right just past a large tree encircled by a woody vine. Look left across the path.

5 – Sargent’s magnolia (Magnolia sargentiana) is a deciduous tree that grows to 11 metres in height and blooms in spring. Its large flowers, 20-30cm wide, have up to 16 tepals. Seedlings flower after about ten years but grafted plants may flower after only eight years. This grafted specimen shows a rootstock whose size and growth rate were not well-matched with the grafted scion and within decades has been outgrown by its trunk. Continue a few steps ahead and turn sharply left uphill onto the gravel path to the small tree on the right.

6 – Japanese mountain ash (Sorbus commixta), a rowan tree in the rose family (Rosaceae), has a long history of use in food and medicine. Its deciduous pinnate leaves turn purple or red in autumn and its bright orange to red fruits are small pomes (like apples) and may persist into winter. Now go on a few steps and look left.

7 – Wilson’s poplar (Populus wilsonii) is native to China and first described and introduced to horticulture by EH Wilson in 1907. This is VanDusen’s only specimen, and it was planted in 1981. It has large heart-shaped leaves with long petioles and attractive exfoliating bark. It is monoecious, bearing male and female catkins on the same tree. The cottony, wind-blown seeds can be messy when they fly in late spring. In BC our native black cottonwood produces abundant fluff in May that drifts through the air like snow.

8 – Rhododendron bureavii, just beyond on the left, is native to Sichuan and Yunnan in China at altitudes of 2800 to 4500 metres. The undersides of its striking leaves have a protective woolly red-brown indumentum that in spring sets off its trusses of white flushed pink bell-shaped flowers. Continue on and look to the right.

9 – Dawson’s magnolia (Magnolia dawsoniana) is native to China and declining in fragmented and scattered populations. Observe again a poorly matched grafted trunk and rootstock. Continue along and down to a crossroads and look for the large conifer that will be on your right.

10 – Deodar cedar (Cedrus deodara) is a conifer with graceful drooping branches and needles clustered in rosettes. It is a true cedar, a member of the pine family (Pinaceae), and native to temperate forests at 1500 to 3200 metres elevation in western Himalaya. The name deodar is from the Sanskrit deva for “god” and daru for “wood”. Curve around to the right to take the path uphill and soon a gravel path also to the right.

11 – Acer maximowiczii is a young maple on the right side of this path. It’s in the soapberry (Sapindaceae) family. Note the patterned bark that is characteristic of the group called “snakebark maples”. The green chlorophyll in the bark enables this species to photosynthesize even in winter. A few steps further on the left bank of the path is a large deciduous tree.

12 – Chinese tulip tree (Liriodendron chinense) is a member of an ancient genus of the magnolia family (Magnoliaceae). Once circumpolar, it is now native only in China and Vietnam (this species) with another species native to eastern North America. It is a relict species with a few remnant groups surviving and is widely scattered in forests in the Yangtze River valley and south to northern Vietnam. It is declining in the wild. Look for its fallen tulip-shaped leaves on the ground. Just a few steps further look right for the next tree.

13 – Manchurian ash (Fraxinus mandshurica) is a deciduous tree with pinnate leaves in the olive family (Oleaceae) native to Russia, China, Korea and Japan. It is dioecious, wind-pollinated, with wind and water dispersed seeds, and grown in mixed species plantations for timber in China. In its native habitat this ash is a major host but not susceptible to damage of the emerald ash borer, a pest that has decimated urban and wild ash forests of North America since its introduction from Asia in the 1990s. Continue straight stopping just before the pond for the tree on the left.

14 – Dipteronia sinensis, like the maples, is in the soapberry family (Sapindaceae). It has pinnate, opposite leaves and seeds in a single papery samara in contrast to the double winged samaras of maples. Both are spread by wind. Now endemic only to mainland China, Dipteronia is in the fossil record of the Eocene deposits at the McAbee Fossil Beds of BC. Continue down the path as it curves right and head through a four-way junction, then look right at the next tree.

15 – Goldenrain tree (Koelreuteria paniculata) is a broad rounded tree in the soapberry family (Sapindaceae) with yellow blooms in summer and 3-sided papery seed capsules in fall. Its pinnate leaves are alternate rather than opposite like maples and Dipteronia. Fossil evidence of Koelreuteria is concentrated in Asia but some also occur in North America. Go ahead a few steps and look left.

16 – Golden Japanese cedar (Cryptomeria japonica ‘Sekkan-sugi’), on your left just before the intersection, is a conifer cultivar valued for its bright yellow foliage. The species is native to Japan where it is called “sugi” and has been widely planted around temples and shrines. The 400-year-old Cedar Avenue of Nikko is lined with about 13,000 Cryptomeria trees and is 35.41 km (22 miles) long. Proceed to the crossing path, turn right, go through the next crossing and then right to our next tree.

17 – Acer pectinatum, a maple of China, Nepal and Myanmar, is regarded by botanists as part of the complex of snakebark maples (along with #11) whose genetic relationships are not precisely agreed upon as to species or subspecies. Its leaves have three to five broad pointed lobes and bright yellow to orange fall colour. Its bark quickly loses its green pattern and turns brown. Just to the right of the nearby bench are three low evergreen shrubs.

18 – Eurya japonica ‘Winter Wine’ is a cultivar of an evergreen understory shrub native to forests of Japan and Korea and is in the pentaphylax family (Pentaphylacaceae). Compact, rich dark green foliage is typical of Eurya and this cultivar was selected for the burgundy colour of its winter foliage. It’s considered hardy to Zone 7 but planted here in 2024, so we don’t yet know how it will fare in our variable winters. Its small, inconspicuous flowers are borne in the leaf axils in late winter and are so noticeably unpleasant to smell that “malodorous” is a common descriptor.

Turn back to the main path and the four-way intersection and follow the paved path downhill through the Great Lawn to return to the Visitor Centre. Thank you for visiting VanDusen Garden today.