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March 2026: Bur Oak
By Andy Mead The Marybeth McAlister Memorial Bur Oak. Our Tree of the Month for March is the bur oak, which is Lexington’s official tree. This article will begin with one particular bur oak, which is informally known as The Marybeth McAlister Memorial Bur Oak. The tree is in my back yard. Marybeth McAlister was my wife. Several months after she died in early 2014, my friend Rob Pokorney planted a tiny tree that he had sprouted from an acorn. Rob said the acorn had good genes;


February 2026: Osage Orange
By Andy Mead Our tree of the month feature for February takes us 30 miles out of Lexington to visit an Osage Orange ( Maclura pomifera ) at Old Fort Harrod in Harrodsburg in Mercer County. The species is native to Oklahoma, Arkansas and Texas, but apparently was planted at the fort around the time the frontier outpost was built in 1774. The Fort Harrod osage orange in all its glory. The sign informing Fort Harrod visitors of the tree's record setting measurements and ineligib


January 2026: False Cypress
The January Tree of the Month is a genus of six evergreens in the cypress family called Chamaecyparis, or False Cypress. The species are native to the North American coasts and temperate East Asia. The genus name combines the Greek words chamai , for "dwarf or low to the ground" and kuparissos , for "cypress.” They are medium to large trees that reach 50 to 90 feet in landscape settings. Their vertical growth habit means they often are used as screens or windbreaks or groupe


Spot - and then smash - the Spotted Lanternfly
Adult Spotted Lanternfly, image by Daledbet from Pixabay. Kentucky entomologists are asking people to be on the lookout for a pretty but destructive insect that could be using its piercing mouthpart to suck sap from a tree near you. The Spotted Lanternfly ( Lycorma delicatula ) i s a native of Eastern Asia that made its way to the U.S in 2014, when it was found in Pennsylvania. In Asia the Spotted Lanternfly (SLF) is controlled by parasitic wasps that aren’t found here. It ha


Cicadas: Brood XIV Emergence in the Bluegrass
If this were a movie, it would be a sequel. Call it “Brood XIV: Return of the Teen-aged Orange-Eyed Insects.” Brook XIV (also referred to as the "Bourbon Brood") 17-year cicadas (si-KAY-das), are now making their first appearance in Kentucky and a dozen other states since 2008, when George W. Bush was president. Image by AshleeMarie from Pixabay. They have been subsisting on the sap from tree roots for all these years, waiting for some strange alarm clock to ring. They probab
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