Dawes Arboretum located in Central Ohio consists of 1,800 acres of formal gardens, fields, ponds, and forests, including eight miles of hiking trails. Among its facilities are a visitors center, rest rooms, picnic areas and shelters. The meticulously maintained formal gardens are a popular venue for weddings.
The arboretum was established by Columbus residents Beman and Bertie Dawes. They purchased an old farm in Licking County, renamed it Daweswood and planted trees and established gardens. Read more ➜ Dawes Arboretum
Dawes Arboretum located in Central Ohio consists of 1,800 acres of formal gardens, fields, ponds, and forests, including eight miles of hiking trails. Among its facilities are a visitors center, rest rooms, picnic areas and shelters. The meticulously maintained formal gardens are a popular venue for weddings.
The arboretum was established by Columbus residents Beman and Bertie Dawes. They purchased an old farm in Licking County, renamed it Daweswood and planted trees and established gardens. Read more ➜ 
These scarecrows are part of a display at Dawes Arboretum that explores alternative energy, such as producing fuel from switch grass. However they appear here because I think scarecrows are adorable. I also like rusty relics, so I particularly liked the scarecrow on the tractor.
I decided to write this after visiting Jackson Bog State Nature Preserve and reading all the informative signs there... except they weren't all that informative for me because I didn't know my swamps from my bogs. So when I came home I decided to learn a few wetland basics.
Let's start with the easy stuff. In North America a wetland that has trees growing in it is called a swamp. That's why Dawes Arboretum referred to the following grove of trees as "Cypress Swamp".
A marsh 
I always associated the bald-cypress pictured above with the bayous of the deep south. Imagine my surprise to learn that we have some growing in Central Ohio. It turns out that the mature bald-cypress (Taxodium distichum) is actually cold tolerant. You may be wondering why we aren't seeing them all over the place. Well, they can't reproduce naturally in this climate because the immature seedlings are susceptible to ice damage. But if you nurture the little seedlings in a greenhouse, then transplant