Dear List,
I had taken Stadlen's comment:
"Surely shagbark hickory is not shagbark juniper?" as a joke concerning
my former mistake, when I exchanged the word "hickory" for "juniper". Actually,
there is a shagbark juniper ( Juniper osteosperma)and it grows in the Southwest,
mainly in Utah.
Its size would be a better option
to fit in Shade's garden and it might even hold a swing.
The hickory tree may grow to 40 meters and its horizontal branch is high up,
anteceded by hanging boughs that would have to be pruned; the shagbark juniper
never grows over 9 meters.
I still think there might be better
options among shagbark trees, once we forget Kinbote's description of it as a
"hickory" .
It would be too ironical, the ghost of
a Kinbotean joke, if Shade's shagbark happened to be a "Juniper utana" as I
mistakenly had initially thought it would be.
Jansy