Last week’s tree words were no walk in the park

We were looking up last week – to the tree canopy. Spellers probably noticed that the previous bee’s words were all plucked from the field of tree identification. Indeed, I jotted them down during a tree walk; most were new to me. The results last week make clear they were too arcane, with the top speller scoring just 70 percent – and everyone else failing. The hardest words were:

Glaucous: having a powdery or waxy coating.

Lanceolate: tapering to a point at the apex and sometimes at the base.

Rachis: the central stem, shaft, or supporting axis in biology.

Sessile: fixed in one place without the ability to move around; attached directly by their base without a stalk, stem or petiole.

Petiole: a slender stem that supports the blade of a foliage leaf.

And a shout-out to the sharp-eyed reader who noticed that I, the spelling bee moderator, misspelled a word the previous week. If you were wrongly marked incorrect for chlorophyll, I apologize and am quite embarrassed. Turns out we can all use a little brushing up.

Take this week’s (less thorny) quiz by going to the Fun & Games tab of our website.