Wintry D.C. and its elegant trees

The wardrobe of trees never ceases to amaze me.

In the spring, lush green dresses dotted with flowers. In the fall, gorgeous orange and flame red accents. And in the winter, stark limbs reaching in fine detail to the sky. I might love the winter best.

I visited the D.C. National Mall over holiday break, an annual family tradition that always includes a delicious meal at the National Museum of the Native American's creative Mitsitam Native Foods Cafe. (Think buffalo chili and fry bread, roasted sunchokes and wild rice salad.) Another highlight was Julia Child's kitchen at the National Museum of American History. (Yes, they picked up the entire thing and transplanted it to D.C., like a precious fossil.)


This year, though, I was really struck by the trees.

In the spring, the trees in D.C. are a tourist attraction in and of themselves. Around the tidal basin, the cheery cherry blossoms explode into a frothy white beauty.

In the winter, the trees are naked. At first glance, they just look like a broom of branches. But then ... see the way the limbs curl up, stretch into space, divide into a seemingly endless array of tinier branches?


In the background of a powerful tree, the Hirshhorn looks dull and timid.


Lined up, at attention.


The trees on the Mall are so deliberately there. Pruned and placed just so.

I wondered, would the developers and the urban planners be enthralled if trees had only one coat, the bare lines of their winter selves? Everything dismal gray and naked, would a surveyor of the land marvel at the intricate limbs or see them as merely obstacles to the line of sight? Would they be knocked down for their valuable real estate?

Would trees be exiled to a museum, rather than surrounding us?




Would humans think, oh, we can do better than this?


Then I found this last tree. Mais, ceci n'est pas un arbre.

I was first fooled, standing in the Sculpture Garden and snapping photos.

Then I realized that the limbs were incredibly shiny, glistening, like polished stainless steel.

This tree has a name: "Graft." It has a creator, Roxy Paine. I searched online and found this description by Blake Gopnik of The Washington Post. He writes:

"Set against the live trees already in the garden, Paine's piece has the strangest effect: It's grander and more impressive than them, but also so much deader. The trees, in a sense, critique the human artifice — "That's the best you can do?"