Lirio is a name that celebrates our commitment to trees.
To date, projects on which we have collaborated have planted over 900,000 trees.
L+A Landscape Architecture is now Lirio.
I never really noticed how long Liriodendron tulipifera, the tulip tree, holds on to its seeds through the Winter. I never thought about what creatures might take advantage of– no, depend upon—that winter source of fat and protein when times are lean. And so I stop to consider again the miracle of how these seeds came to be. The Spring-blooming flowers - simultaneously gorgeous and Dr. Seuss-like in their near fluorescent spectacle of green and orange - produce a great pool of bold nectar. Honeybees, like the ones we shored up for Winter in their boxy wooden hives just a few months back, forage in the tulip trees in late-Spring after the fruit trees wind down. The bees can completely fill their honey-stomachs with a single tulip flower and produce a dark and complex honey, prized by some, loathed by others. The seed set of open-pollinated flowers is abysmal - 5-20% at best. It is unknown as to whether this is mostly related to the lack of self-compatibility in the flowers, the possible decline in pollinator populations or mismatch in the timing of native pollinators who might have evolved to be in sync with this species. Asychnronized: the word used by scientists to describe climate related mismatches between organisms who are dependent on one another. “The Delicate Timing of Things in Winter,” The New York Phenology Project.