THE core of the garden, the sloping lawns with some of America's oldest specimen trees, is being replanted with many of the native shrubs that William Bartram and his son John, the nation's earliest plant collectors, assembled and introduced to cultivation.
There were specimen trees, like an English oak and sweet gum, both with variegated leaves, and mounding shrubs, like stephanandra, whose bright green, deeply incised leaves cascaded over black sedge grass.
The property, being donated by Henriette Suhr, has gardens containing azaleas, conifers and specimen trees as well as a pond with woodlands bordered by a stream.
The next tallest trees are the Australian mountain ash (Eucalyptus regnans), specimens of which in Victoria, Australia, exceed 90 metres (300 feet), the greatest heights known for nonconiferous trees.
Keele University arboretum is new, so most of the trees are young – but there are some rare and exciting specimens.
The trees are planted close to each other to encourage tall straight specimens to reach for the light.
To confirm the taxonomic determination of the examined specimens, molecular phylogenetic trees were constructed using one mitochondrial gene, cytochrome c oxidase subunit 1 (COI) and one nuclear marker, the internal transcribed spacer 2 (ITS2).
Trees were rooted by specimens of Talpa europaea and Uropsilus soricipes.
Trees were outgroup rooted using specimens from the established sister group, Eubosmina sp. from North America.
The trees were identified and labelled and voucher specimens were kept in the Herbarium of the Garden (Table 1).
The nc trees were calculated with the H4/H3 data of the same subset of specimens.
