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Each month an Arbor Day Foundation staff member shares their favorite tree. We have taken our Favorite Tree Friday series and invited guest bloggers to share their favorite tree with us. This month Dr. Bridget Coughlin, CEO of Shedd Aquarium tells us why she loves the blackhaw viburnum.
While most often known for its 32,000 animals, Shedd Aquarium is also home to vegetation from around the world, such as the tropical pitcher plant native to islands of the Malaysian archipelago. Often overlooked however, are the plants that greet Museum Campus guests before they step foot inside our historic building.
Surrounding our walls, Shedd designs, plants and cares for 13 gardens that make up four acres of native flora and fauna. We grow tomatoes, peppers and herbs, allowing our horticulture team to mix up a delicious, fresh batch of salsa a few times each summer. We grow hops and team up with Revolution Brewing to create our own seasonal beer, Penguin Hops. And, to many a surprise, we care for a few hives of honey bees that produce organic honey, which Shedd’s veterinarians use occasionally as a natural topical antibiotic to treat our animals. While all are unique to Shedd, our honey bees introduced me to the species of tree that I hold dearest to my heart.
The Viburnum prunifolium, or the blackhaw viburnum, is a native shrub to our region – tall, strong and vibrantly green in the summer. We have just one of these trees at Shedd, which is located on the south side of our building near our seasonal Stingray Touch experience. It is also nearby our beehives. This summer, I was given the opportunity to see how this tree was far from ordinary for our bees as thousands of them fled their hive and clustered around a tree branch on the Blackhaw viburnum protecting their queen bee. The group was headed off to find a new place of residence. Though the swarm was short-lived, it so powerfully depicted our trees are homes: homes to animals and insects, and even used within our own homes. As Dorothy once said, “there’s no place like home.” And, what a wonderfully beautiful and healthy home we have here in Illinois thanks to trees like the Blackhaw viburnum and insects like our honeybees.
