Winter is a surprisingly good time to identify some deciduous trees. Yes, they are no longer carrying some of their best features for identification–leaves and flowers–yet many of them are bearing fruit, their bark is often recognizable, and even their roots can tell a tale.
And there are other ways.
From a distance, this street tree looks like a tall stick below and a red cloud above.
Getting closer, the redness turns out to be red berries growing separately; I would say alternately rather than oppositely, a clue for how the branches grow. The oval hole surrounded by a collar on the left of the photo just below the middle is where the tree is healing itself after being pruned. This is how trees take care of themselves. To the right of that oval is another much smaller hole, again with a collar. Perhaps the branch was smaller and the pruning earlier.
One way we can be more certain about the genus and species of the tree is by going to the map view in the database created by the City of Vancouver: https://opendata.vancouver.ca/explore/dataset/public-trees/map. There we can expand the map, search for the tree’s location, and click on its icon.
Up pops a list of details: This tree is an English hawthorn, Crataegus oxyacantha. This species is now known botanically as C. laevigata. (Even scientific names sometimes change!) If you continue to scroll down on the tree icon, you sometimes find more information, such as when the tree was planted. Further information for this tree gives a height of 7.6 m and trunk diameter of 30.5 cm.
It’s always good to check the information in the database with what you see growing in the ground.
Next is a row of tall street trees that look like a fountain of smaller branches hanging from several main branches. The next two photos provide more clues: alternate branching, smooth bark, buds that are long and pointed, a weeping branch that hangs down straight from the trunk, and very solid, above-ground roots.
The City of Vancouver’s database says these trees are weeping beeches, Fagus sylvatica ‘Pendula’, where ‘Pendula’ is the cultivar. These trees are 13.7 m tall and have a trunk diameter of 35.6 cm.
Finally for this week is a London plane tree, Platanus x hispanica, though the City of Vancouver database calls it P. x acerifolia. I am delighted to see that the Park Board is now adding into their database the trees planted in public parks. Just scroll into a park as part of your search and expand until you reach a tree icon that you want to know about. This tree’s specific epithet of hispanica suggests it is from Spain. The x means the planetree (Platanus) is a hybrid, and in this case it is a natural hybrid that took place in Spain between P. orientalis (Oriental planetree) and P. occidentalis (American sycamore).
The two giveaways for identification of this tree are (1) the colourful patches on the trunk’s where the tree defoliates itself and any pollution it might absorb, and (2) the globe-shaped spiky fruit that are about the size of a loony. They hang on the sunny side of the tree.