Identifying trees in the "leafless deep bush"

The following is excerpted from "Wood" in Too Much Happiness by Alice Munro with images by this blog for Festival of the Trees 66.

Many people recognize trees by their leaves or by their general shape and size, but walking through the leafless deep bush Roy knows them by their bark.  Ironwood, that heavy and reliable firewood, has a shaggy brown bark on its stocky trunk, but its limbs are smooth at their tips and decidedly reddish.  Cherry is the blackest tree in the bush, and its bark lies in picturesque scales.  Most people would be surprised at how high cherry trees grow here--they are nothing like the cherry trees in fruit orchards.  Apple trees are more like their orchard representatives--not very tall, bark not so definitely scaled or dark as the cherry's.  Ash is a soldierly tree with a corduroy-ribbed trunk.  The maple's gray bark has an irregular surface, the shadows creating black streaks, which meet sometimes in rough rectangles, sometimes not.  There is a comfortable carelessness about their bark, suitable to the maple tree, which is homely and familiar and what most people think of when they think of a tree.

Beech trees and oaks are another matter--there is something notable and dramatic about them, though neither has as lovely a shape as the big elm trees which are now nearly all gone.  Beech has the smooth gray bark, the elephant skin, which is usually chosen for the carving of initials.  These carvings widen with the years and decades, from the slim knife groove to the blotches that make the letters at last illegible, wider than they are long.

Beech will grow a hundred feet high in the bush. In the open they spread out and are as wide as high, but in the bush they shoot up, the limbs at the top will take radical turns and can look like stag horns.  But this arrogant-looking tree may have a weakness of twisted grain, which can be detected by ripples in the bark.  That's a sign that it might break, or go down in a high wind.  As for oak trees, they are not so common in this country, not so common as beech but always easy to spot.  Just as maple trees always look like the common necessary tree in the backyard, so oak trees always look like trees in storybooks, as if, in all the stories that begin, "Once upon a time in the woods," the woods were full of oaks.  Their dark, shiny, elaborately indented leaves contribute to this look, but they seem just as legendary when the leaves are off and you can see so well the thick corky bark with its gray-black color and intricate surface, and the devilish curling and curving of the branches.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Schwartz Plaza Native Woodland Garden

We reprinted on May 7, 2010 an NYU Alumni Magazine article about the university's "public" gardens including the Schwartz Plaza Native Woodland Garden.  The alumni magazine article reported 39 species growing in the 2200 square-foot garden such as ferns, sedge, wild ginger, and sarsaparilla.  Also growing in the garden were non-native trees like littleleaf linden (Tilia cordata), pictured above, Japanese maple (Acer palmatum), and Japanese pagoda tree (Styphnolobium japonicum).

When we first saw the garden, several lindens rose above the fern and wild ginger understory in its northern section.  This fall the trees were removed to accommodate a construction project and were replaced this month with American hornbeam or Carpinus caroliana, also known as ironwood.  The species is described as

A handsome tree in many locations, the tree slowly reaches a height and spread of 20 to 30 feet.  It will grow with an attractive open habit in total shade, but be dense in full sun. The muscle-like bark is smooth, gray and fluted. Ironwood has a slow growth rate and is reportedly difficult to transplant from a field nursery (although 10-inch-diameter trees were moved with a 90-inch tree spade during the winter in USDA hardiness zone 8b with no problem) but is easy from containers. The fall color is faintly orange to yellow and stands out in the landscape or woods in the fall. Brown leaves occasionally hang on the tree into the winter.

Native to the East Coast, the American hornbeam seems an appropriate addition to this garden which offers "a small, rare glimpse of the landscape that the Manahates might have known in 1609."  According to the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service, American hornbeam has low-minor wildlife value.  The NRCS fact sheet for Carpinus caroliana is available at http://plants.usda.gov/factsheet/pdf/fs_caca18.pdf.

Although I did not notice this while the lindens were growing in the garden, the linden flowers are a major bee attractant which may be a drawback in this heavily populated area or the garden might have hosted some of the city's "new" bee species.   A few lindens remain in the plaza proper but I will miss the large massing of the species.

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Have you seen the Time Landscape at LaGuardia Place and Houston Street?

From the plaque posted at the park:

Landscape artist Alan Sonfist (1946- ) created Time Landscape as a living monument to the forest that once blanketed Manhattan Island. He proposed the project in 1965. After extensive research on New York’s botany, geology, and history Sonfist and local community members used a palette of native trees, shrubs, wild grasses, flowers, plants, rocks, and earth to plant the 25' x 40' rectangular plot at the northeast corner of La Guardia Place and West Houston Street in 1978. The result of their efforts is a slowly developing forest that represents the Manhattan landscape inhabited by Native Americans and encountered by Dutch settlers in the early 17th century. (source)

Chlorophyll to mostly xanthophyll

If you follow us on Twitter (@localecologist), you already know that the first version of this post was eaten by the proverbial dog.  Since the time we drafted the essay and now, fall color has peaked in the city.  In some places you can still see brilliant yellows and yellow-oranges.  Although there are three classes of pigments responsible for fall color in broadleaf, deciduous trees, the most common public trees across the five boroughs exhibit in the yellow-orange-brown range.  Yellows are produced by xanthophyll, oranges by carotenoid, and reds and purples by anthocyanin.

The ten most common street trees across NYC's five boroughs and their associated fall colors are:

London planetree (yellow),
Littleleaf linden (yellow),
Norway maple (depends on the cultivar),
Green ash (yellow),
Callery pear (depends on the cultivar),
Red maple (red),
Honeylocust (yellow),
Silver maple (yellow),
Pin oak (red-brown),
Ginkgo (yellow)

If you spot red- and purple-leaves this time of year excluding those on the above list, you might be looking at "purple-leaved" plums, Japanese or Norway maples or anthocyanin-leaved sweetgums and Zelkovas.  A good thing about the "dog eating my homework" is that I read about the map of potential autumn colors of street trees" in Somerville, Massachusetts created by Bostonography in the November 11 issue of The Atlantic Cities.  If such a map existed for NYC I could diversify my autumn colors of trees photo collection!

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Then & Now: Mercer Street Plaza in Fall 2010 and Summer 2011
Munich awash in carotenoids, too in 2010

Festival of the Trees No. 65

Image: Fallen sassafras branches, New Jersey

Snow-covered trees were not among the topics in the submissions in this round as the October 27 deadline preceded the Northeast snow event.  Last weekend, New York and other Northeastern U.S. cities received snowfall.  For New York it was record breaking: not since 1952 has snow fallen before Halloween.  My brother's sassafras (shown above) was still in leaf and lost a major branch due to snow loading. 

Image: Scotch Pine wasps, image courtesy of Seabrooke Leckie

Seabrooke Leckie's Canadian Thanksgiving was sunny and dry based on the photographs of the "nice patch of woodland habitat" near her in-laws house.  In that woodland, Leckie discovered Scotch Pine wasps feeding on the scale nectar produced possibly by Pine Tortoise Scale (Toumeyella parvicornis).

Another discovery comes by way of Dave at Fidaldo Island Crossing.  On a visit to Washington Park in Anacortes, Washington, he observed from a distance what he thought was a "wonderful, weathered old" but dead tree.  Dave later learned that the tree is a Seaside or Puget Sound Juniper, Juniperus maritima and until 2007, this species was classified as Juniperus scopulorum, the Rocky Mountain Juniper.  Furthermore, the population at Washington Park "is the most robust with hundreds of trees".

The freakish snow storm in the city last weekend postponed a local fall foliage tour.  I hope the tour is rescheduled before the peak of fall color and more importantly before the trees shed their leaves.  If you have forgotten why leaves change color, head to Rebecca in the Woods where Rebecca has composed a concise answer about the biochemistry of fall color and one that is beautifully illustrated, too.  Do you know the origin of the London planetree, Platanus x acerifolia?  Paul at The Street Tree has written an impressive natural history of one its parents, the Oriental Plane, Platanus orientalis.

Larry Ayers of Riverside Rambles captured the fall colors of a Black Oak, Quercus velutina -- so royally purple and blue!  Even more fall color can be seen at Tasting Rhubarb.  Jean wrote with her submission: "Looked up the other morning on my harassed way to work and saw these - what more can I say?"  Indeed!

Image: Beech, Ewden Valley, courtesy of treeblog

In addition to fall color, size and age are "wow factors" for tree lovers.  Ash at treeblog saw some "beautiful, jaw-droppingly large" beeches in a woodland in the Ewden Valley and the largest of the lot he has named "the King of Ewden".  Over at Human Flower Project, James H. Wandersee and Renee M. Clary of EarthScholars™ Research Group related the story of "a nearly infinite- looking, 3-mile-long, alley of Loblolly Pine (Pinus taeda) and Coast Live Oak (Quercus virginiana) leading up to" Gerome Charles Durand's former plantation home in St. Martinville, Louisiana. More than 150 years later, only one mile of the original allee remains.

Arati at Trees, Plants & more experienced white of a different kind than the folks in the Northeastern U.S. did.  He was struck by a path lined with Morinda tinctoria whose flowers had carpeted the ground white in a local park.  I was struck that the first photo in Arati's post about a recent trip is of a Traveller's Palm, so named according to Wikipedia because the rainwater stored in its sheaths were used as emergency sources of drinking water for travelers.

I have never seen in person a Traveller's Palm or a Banyan Tree.  Uma of Mauve Sea has written and illustrated with photographs and drawings an essay about the oldest Banyan Tree (Ficus benghalensis) in Chennai which is growing at The Theosophical Society there.  What I thought were several trees is actually "a clonal colony carrying memories of the mother tree in their fibers of existence".  See for yourself!

Image: Perry pears, courtesy of The Street Tree

More than any other time of the year, I associate the fall with food and eating.  Perhaps this is true for the authors who submitted the following posts about edible trees.  A street of Perry pear trees (Pyrus communis) near the Archway tube station in north London were preserved and now, Paul wrote, "the council picks the fruit each autumn (not since 2007 in such abundance) and local residents make use of them. Apparently one group has even made Perry" or pear cider.  Let's not forget maple syrup.  Mindful Momma wrote about a taste testing of Hudson River Valley-made Crown Maple Syrup.  Crown Amber Light was the family favorite.  If the persimmon tree would grow in the Northeast U.S., I would convince my brother to plant one.  I discovered the deliciousness of a ripe persimmon when I lived in California and count it among my favorite fruits.  I was pleased to receive the essay about "a special tree that is sharing it's sweet fruit with the world right now" from Rebecca of A Year With the Trees.

The year is winding down as is Natalie Raeber's The Tree Year Project 2011 the origin of which she explained at Save Our Woods.  Don't fret, though, there is still time to participate in The Tree Year.  Also, Natalie is seeking collaborators to extend the project into 2012 (contact her at tty @ raebeer.ch).

Finally, I would like to offer my own contribution: an aerial photograph of the Sasaki Garden at Washington Square Village, one of my favorite places in New York City.  The garden, completed in 1950, is home to a wide range of trees, shrubs, and herbaceous perennials in addition to unique design and hardscape elements.

Image: Sasaki Garden at Washington Square Village

I would like to thank the contributors for their help in producing this 65th Edition of the Festival of the Trees.  The festival relies on volunteers and needs your help: please volunteer to host!  Information can be found at http://festivalofthetrees.wordpress.com/volunteer-to-host/.