Beautiful trees. We have them down here in Washington as well, though here we call them Pacific madrone. Native Americans used to use the bark as a tea which was supposed to help with things like stomach upset.
I’m still trying to figure out lemmy! I originally had the above linked and then decided to include a picture but apparently that overrides the link. Also TIL that the site doesn’t grab images from links like R3dd!t does.
I think it’s a common municipal bylaw for communities on Vancouver Island that every second business has be named “Arbutus” something.
But seriously, it’s a really neat tree, plus the wood is a gorgeous red. An uncle made a crib out of an arbutus on his property that got felled. It’s absolutely gorgeous. It’s not a very straight tree though, so I don’t know of any large commercial use, so no Arbutus panelling, floors, banisters, etc. unless you happen to know someone with the ability to do it from scratch.
They look great, especially when mature. They still make a bit of a mess, since they shed their bark rather than their leaves. I guess it’s also a pretty weird tree.
On top of it being really gnarly wood to work with, they also don’t transplant very well. Because of both of these factors, it will likely never be commercially harvested, just BC’s weird wild tree. I love the way parts of it can die off, and new wood just grows around it like putty.
I think it’s a common municipal bylaw for communities on Vancouver Island that every second business has be named “Arbutus” something.
I lived in Vancouver way too long to not have realized Arbutus was a tree of some sort. There is a neighbourhood with tree themed street names and it never occurred to me to investigate what type of tree Arbutus was amongst the Yew and Birch routes. My partner said he thought Arbutus was just some historical dude.
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