VIA donates tree to Rehoboth Beach community

The VIA has been donating trees, shrubs and flowers to the city of Rehoboth Beach for more than 100 years. The VIA Conservation Committee is keeping with that tradition yearly. In observance of Earth Day, a serviceberry tree was dedicated April 21 to the City of Rehoboth Beach.

Commissioners Kathy McGuiness, Stan Mills and Patrick Gossett attended, along with many VIA members.

Th serviceberry, sometimes called Juneberry, is an American native plant. It is beautiful in early spring for its billows of lacy white blooms and again in autumn for blazing color on its rounded leaves. In late spring, the tree’s multitude of delicious purple-red berries ripen. Serviceberry trees come in many regional variations, and can thrive from the U.S.-Canadian border to the Southern Appalachians, from the West Coast to the East Coast. They can grow well in wet conditions and in considerable shade, at the edge of woods or in open forest.

Nobel prize-winning poet Rabindranath Tagere said, “Trees are Earth’s endless effort to speak to the listening heavens.”