trees
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Sassy!
A venerable sassafras (Sassafras albidum) in Green-Wood. May be the state record holder for tallest: 69′ in 2016. 138″ in diameter at 4.5′ height. More interestingly, at least to me, is the question of age. Does this pre-date the establishment of the cemetery in 1838? If not it must come close. Sprouting adjacent. Sassafras is…
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Good Bones
A couple of red oaks. Gates of tuliptree, or… Ents, yes, there are definitely Ent possibilities in these two. An uncharacteristic tuliptree. Usually they are quite straight and single-boled.
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Bracket Fungus
Cracked Cap Polyphore is so intimately associated with black locust (Robinia pseudoacacia) that the fungus’s binomial memorializes it: Phellinus robiniae. Hard to find the tree without the fungus. Right next to this black locust is another, and it also sprouts some of these shelf-like fungal growths. N.B.: both of these locusts are still alive.
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Reach
Whoa! Make sure the five foot long branches of poison ivy coming off the vine twirled up this old pine don’t get ya! This is one of the best examples of the vine form of Toxicodendron radicans I’ve ever seen. It’s wild and wooly and has a hell of a wingspan. It would be easy…
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Trees in Winter
Look at this diabolical face! The downy upper portion of the leaf scar points to Butternut (Juglans cinerea). This one, on the other hand, baffled me. I couldn’t find it in Core and Ammons’ Woody Plants in Winter. (It is in there, though.) iNaturalist people provided the identification: this is the incredibly common Ailanthus (Ailanthus…
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Holly Month
These two tads, both at the base of the same massive beech, seem to have survived the demonic weed-whackers. They are located about 200 feet in a straight line from this very spectacular American holly (Ilex opaca). This damage may come from the larvae of a fly in the Phytomyza genus. The big boy pictured…
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End of An Era
I’ve been blessed with a few years of red and swamp white oaks as street tree neighbors on my way to the subway. A plethora of life forms sucking, chewing, reproducing, and dying on these trees has been visible at eye-level. Argh, but the contractors recently came through to limb all these up. Now the…
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Beech Nuts
The root of the word book is the same as that of the word beech. The late poet C. D. Wright’s posthumously published Casting Deep Shade is an “amble inscribed to beeches and co.” Appropriately, this book itself is a lovely thing. The unusual trifold cover makes it highly inappropriate for subway reading, but there…
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Old Hickory
This was actually yellower to my eyes than this orange-ish reproduction via the camera, but either way it sure jumped out at me — from outside the cemetery, actually. Carya species native here include mockernut, bitternut, pignut, and shagbark, but of course Green-Wood is an arboretum originally planted with specimen trees. I think this might…
Backyard and Beyond 