Catalpa

A catalpa in full bloom in Highbridge Park.

More CP Trees

Black locust and devils-walking-stick, with its big compound leaves (up to five feet long), very prickly; this particular one is fenced in to prevent the tots from harpooning themselves. But how will they learn?

CP Trees

Golden Larch and black tupelo.

Ned Barnard

I was in Central Park today on an epic walk with Edward Sibley Barnard. That's him in the background showing off the smooth almost-beech like bark of a hackberry. Real nice guy. A good twenty people on the walk, including this guy, who wrote the book on 'shrooms. Followed by pics of shingle oak and and English oak at Pilgrim Hill, more or less at 72nd &5th.

My backyard

Swamp White Oak

Quercus bicolor on Washington Avenue. We pruned three of the lower branches today and mulched the pit.

Typical Brooklyn Scene

In the BBG. The low resolution of this image in no way represents the cloudy day purple of these flowers.

Hedge Maple

Grand Army Plaza entrance, Prospect Park

Scotch Elm

Leaves and keys and a detail of the massive, nobby base of the bole. This is right next to the first baseball diamond heading south past the Pools.

Windfall linden

This big linden on the SE end of the ballfields, Long Meadow, toppled in yesterday's storm.

Heartwood

Boxelder

Acer negundo, the boxelder, on the western edge of Lookout Hill across from the Quaker Cemetery. Compound leaves, unlike other maples

Nethermead whatsit?

There are two of these in the SE corner of the Nethermead. Check out the teeth. Is it some kind of chinkapin?

Prospect buckeye

This buckeye (Ohio, I think) hangs over the head of the path from the Rose Gardens into the Vale.

Royal Weed

photo from agebb.missouri.edu

The princess tree, royal paulownia (paulownia tomentosa -- I bet she tormented them), is blooming right now. These showly flowers can get to be two inches long. It's a very handsome tree in bloom and often shows up in empty lots and other disturbed areas because it's a ready colonizer. For instance, there was one visible from Green-Wood's Battle Hill, outside of the cemetery and across the street and in the backyard of a new building that's blocking some of the view from the Hill. I also passed one yesterday that had taken root just where the S train emerges from underneath Washington Avenue, but all the flowers were on the other side of the fencing that keeps the riff-raff off the tracks. I couldn't get my nose in them. There's also an old brute of one next to the Prospect Park HQ at the Litchfield Villa. That Princess has become a czarina, maimed and stumpy but still putting on a show in spring time, for the ball.

H2O

Yesterday, I learned that pin oaks, bald cypress, and green ash are all swamp dwellers. So what are they doing on the sidewalks of Brooklyn? Water, after all, is the biggest issue for street trees. The pin oak, quercus palustris, in particularly, is ominipresent on the sidewalks. True, the bald cypress isn't so common, but there are a trio of them outside the 1000 Washington Ave entrance to the BBG that are doing nicely, thank you very much. It's because these three species are genetically adapted to the murky waters of swamps and hollers, so they can take the low levels of oxygen often found in the compacted soil of tree pits. They are tough little bastards.

By the way, the pic I have below of Dawn Redwood bark maybe bald cypress. My bad. There's a dawn redwood right next to the three baldies, hence my confusion. Both species are non-evergreen conifers; they shed their needles. But now that their new needles are coming in, you can see that the redwood has oppositely arranged leaves (needles are leaves) and is much more pyramidal in overall shape, while the baldy has alternate leaves and is rounder at the top.

Sunday Trees

This American elm in Tompkins Square was shedding its keys. In fact, all the elms in the area were doing so, so the streets looked like they were in a light snowfall.

Last night, walking down Van Brunt Street in Red Hook, I passed a red buckeye just past its full flowering. It was in a yard, one of the few trees along that stretch of Van Brunt. It's out of range according to my National Audubon Society Field Guide to Trees Eastern Region. Didn't have my camera in hand.

More galls

These were growing on an elm. There's a itty-bitty insect inside of each of these nodules.

The gall

This cotton-candy like stuff was growing on a big oak. (Think it was red oak.) Barry thought it was some kind of gall. Said there were hundreds of galls associated with oaks. Whatever it is, it rivals the cedar apple rust found below.

not even a sapling

Have you ever seen a baby ginkgo before?

Dogs

Dogwood, and...

Buckeye?

Not sure what kind of buckeye this is. Interestingly, later in the day, in a front lawn on Van Brunt in Red Hook, of all places, saw a definite red buckeye, but I didn't have my camera at that time.

Green-Wood details

Cherry snowfall and a mulberry leaf

Chestnuts

Green-Wood Horse Chestnuts.

The last unleaved trees of the year

A hybrid oak and a caucasian wingnut, both in the BBG. These pictures are from mid-March. After this, there will only be fully leaved trees on this blog until the fall. But I like these trees and thought you should be introduced to them.

Aliens among us

This hard fat pea of a gall (?) on this young oak leaf looks like bad news.

Dawn Redwood bark

This deciduous conifer is an ancient relative of the sequoia and redwoods. It was thought to be extinct, known only in the fossil records, until 1941 when they were discovered growing in a small mountainous area in China. Now they're back in the land they once roamed (so to speak). Washington Avenue.

A Tree Gets Planted in Brooklyn

The Arborist showed us how to plant a balled and burlaped tree along Washington Avenue outside the BBG. It's a serviceberry, also known as shadbush, Amelanchier laevis. Did you know that most roots are within 18 inches of the surface?

Cherry, apple?

Also from Nantucket: Anna's Lane in 'Sconset is lined with these, usually a good place to find orioles and hummingbirds.

Lichen?

Being a particularly damp place, the island is very friendly to lichens, mosses, mildews, etc.

Nantucket trees

Island pines

A copse of pitch pines, pinus rigida, on Nantucket. This species of tree was introduced to the island in the 1840s. They're nicely resistant to the drying effects of salt spray. (It's a tough neighborhood for trees.) Also their thick bark is resistant to fire.