Was it a French press, a percolator, a single serve Keurig — or did a barista make your latte on a giant hissing espresso machine? Each type of coffee-maker has different look and name, but the goal for all of them is the same: making you a tasty hot drink.
It's the same for the flowers of trees. Although the name and arrangement of the flowers differ, each flower has the same goal: getting pollinated to create fertile seeds for the next generation.
For example, the umbel, which you’ll find on the California bay laurel, has flowers that rise from a common point, creating a crown full of small pale-yellow stars.
A corymb is a flat-topped cluster of flowers, all of them produced at one time, which provides a convenient platform for pollinators to perch.
A cyme first blooms at the tip. You’ll find them on the linden, a favorite street tree of the west, looking like fireworks that have burst and frozen in mid-air.
My favorite flower type is the panicle, which has flowers at the tips of each branchlet. Horse chestnut trees make large pink panicles, and on summer days, they look like they’re offering up strawberry ice cream cones to passersby from within their crowns.
Not only are flower forms beautiful, but so are their names, like a song or a prayer: umbel, corymb, cyme, panicle.
As with everything related to trees, it's not just the science that draws us in — it's also the beauty in their form and how we describe them.