Local Ecologist

This guide is based on the Fall Foliage Tree Walk of Washington Square Park organized by WSP Ecology and led by Leslie Day, PhD  on November 14, 2014. Unless otherwise noted, the tree photographs were taken by Hubert J. Steed  from his Trees - Washington Square Park gallery and used with his permission. If you visit the Washington Square Park before the end of the month you may be able to use this guide, otherwise you'll have to wait until next fall. Also, N ot every tree visited during the actual tour is recorded below. Image: English elm, March 31, 2011 (Local Ecologist) Begin your walk at the historic English elm at the northwest corner of the park. The tree is reportedly over 300 years old. Image: London plane tree diagonally across from the Holley Monument Proceed east and look north along the path to a London plane. The species is the most common street tree in NYC and its leaf looks suspiciously like the NYC Parks logo. Image: A type of white oak (

On a beautiful Saturday last month, 16 families participated in the inaugural Nature Scavenger Hunt in Washington Square Park. The scavenger hunt was a project of WSP Ecology in collaboration with Julie Cramer of the NYU Conservation Education program. Washington Square Park is naturally divided into four quadrants. A guide was prepared for each quadrant and we assigned families - four per - to each quadrant. Participants collected acorns from red oaks, hugged really big trees including the historic English elm, smelled stinky fruits of the Ginkgo, looked for squirrel dreys, found muddy puddles, and more. Each child received a box with compartments for collecting as well as a small green lidded box. After 45 minutes we gathered again to review our finds. We were sent a child's drawing of her collection box, the little green box, each leaf and seed pod and acorn cap in its own compartment. The items drawn are a pine needle, hawthorn stem, gingko nut, hawthorn leaf,