Re: Kalopanax

Clyde, I would feel privileged to send you a small aralia spinosa shoot this 
spring. If you remember my mother's garden in Michigan, on one front corner 
at the sidewalk was a very spiny tree. Just inside the split rail fence. 

The story goes like this: when we were young rambunctious boys running 
through the yards and my grandpa's nursery across the street, we would grab 
the young trees, sometimes ripping leaves and branches. It would frustrate my 
parents and grandfather who was growing trees/shrubs in the nursery across 
the street. 

He had an aralia spinosa that he cherished - again I believe it may have come 
from Austria-Hungary or present day Romania , he said Transylvania, but that 
was just to scare us young boys. 

He told my mother he had a way to cure us boys from ripping trees when we ran 
around the neighborhood and his nursery - he planted one of those aralias 
right at the corner of my mother's garden.

Now we would never run through Mom's garden , we knew better, but in only a 
few years we were cured of grabbing ANY branches of any trees. 

Years later I recall an angry neighbor lady yelling at my mother as her small 
son had been severely scratched by trying to rip the aralia (we used to say 
bitten by the Devil's Walking Stick) he almost needed stitches to close the 
gash. He didn't grab any more trees or shrubs at 626 West Lincoln, that's for 
sure.

I can share these with others as supply lasts. In very cold winters they will 
die back but resprout. You do need to select the strongest branches and keep 
pruned.

bruce
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