Maybe that's why I feel an affinity with the mountain mahogany tree. It's of medium height and longevity, and you never encounter it on mountaintops nor in valley lowlands. But being in the middle doesn’t mean it's boring.
Typically found in the western United States and northern Mexico, mountain mahogany isn’t related to the tropical mahogany tree. Its name comes from the crimson color extracted from its bark — called mahogany red — which was made an official Crayola color in 1949. Native Americans use its bark and root extracts to give distinctive colors to their baskets and leather goods.
Mountain mahogany is an "in betweener" when it comes to foliage. Officially, it’s a broadleaf evergreen. Broadleaf because it has flat leaves rather than needles, and evergreen because it keeps its leaves all year, like a pine or fir. Botanists place the mountain mahogany in the rose family, a close cousin to apples and pears.
In the late spring, the tree produces tiny, intricate and beautiful flowers. As the flowers fade, the female reproductive structures elongate and twist, forming fuzzy tails that help the wind carry its seeds to another mountainside home. These delightful feathery plumes inspired its scientific name, Cercocarpus, Greek for tailed fruit.
And while they pepper the natural world, mountain mahogany are also great trees for urban landscapes, as they are resistant to disease and insects, and tolerance to drought.
So, the next time you see the slightly twisted and gnarled form of a mountain mahogany, remember that being in the middle of the pack doesn’t mean average; it just means we have to look a little harder to find what makes it special. Kind of like we middle children.
