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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.

 

Liriodendron tulipifera, the tulip poplar, is the tallest tree in the Eastern Deciduous Forests of the Eastern United States. As a fast-growing hardwood, it sequesters carbon more rapidly than any species in North America. Its common name is derived from the large, yellow, tulip-like flowers borne high in the canopy in the early spring.

Liriodendron chinense, the Chinese tulip poplar or e-zhang-qiu, is commonly known as the duck-footed-tree because of the unique shape of its leaves. Lirio has planted Liriodendron tulipifera on projects in North America and Europe and Liriodendron chinense on projects in Asia.