trees
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Field Trip: Squam Swamp
This is a Nantucket Conservation Foundation property of 294 acres on the northeastern end of the island. The Foundation, which keeps a substantial portion of the island free of the monstrous SUV-scaled houses now built there, has produced an excellent paper interpretive guide to the mile-long trail. Hardwood forests are rare on Nantucket now, but…
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Bottle-brush
This Eastern Redcedar has mostly been taken over by a vine, possibly poison ivy, but I wasn’t going to get that close to find out.
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Another cache
Yesterday, we saw a bird’s nest that had been reused as a cache for seeds. Here’s another little hideaway, which was also probably stocked in the fall by one of the several species of mice that inhabit our noctural woodlands. Look inside.
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Wind-blown
These Eastern Redcedars bear the brunt of the wind. But it’s not just some of the highest wind velocities on the east coast, it’s all that deadly salt, too.
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A Neighborhood Giant
One of my favorite local trees is on Warren Street. It is growing out of a yard instead of the sidewalk. Usually, when they do host trees, these little front yards of brownstone row houses have smaller ornamental fruit trees or understory specialists like dogwood that can thrive under the taller sidewalk trees. This one,…
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Prospect Park
It’s warm enough for turtles to be basking on the Lake, Lullwater, and Pools. Not many, but a smattering were to be seen soaking in the sun along the water course.On a birch, this cocoon is more seasonally appropriate, weathering the not very weathery winter. While I’ve been seeing flies all month already, this was…
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Sweetgum Fruit
The spiky, dried fruits of the Sweetgum tree, Liquidamber styraciflua, often persist on the tree through winter. A strong wind can bring them down to the sidewalk, where the jagged orbs look otherworldly. Each fruit is composed of 40-60 capsules, which are now long since emptied of their seeds. A native tree, and a regular…
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Three Heart-Shaped Leaves
Catalpa:The tree with the foot-long seed pods. Both the Northern Catalpa, C. speciosa, and the Southern Catalpa, C. bignonioides, grow in our region. The ones in Brooklyn Bridge Park may be some kind of cultivar or hybrid. Eastern cottonwoods, Populus deltoides, growing wild in the as yet uncompleted part of the park.Note here the flat…
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Februarius Mirabilis
Are you old enough to remember when winter used to be winter, damn it, and spring, spring? On the way to Prospect Park today, the second day of February, I saw the flowering quince on Congress St. in bloom:And then, in a tree pit in Windsor Terrace, some bulbs were pushing up into the light:In…
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Not as plain as all that
The London Planetree is one of most common street trees in New York City. It is easily distinguished by its pale, smooth, and mottled bark. Rain-slicked, this bark looks something like tropical camouflage. The fruit balls are also distinctive. Of course, when I say “easily distinguished,” I ignore the American Sycamore, which is quite similar,…
Backyard and Beyond 