MAPS / WALKS

Spring Tree ID Walk in Marquand Park, June 11, 2011

Despite rain clouds threatening, Roland and Pamela Machold led about 40 walkers on a 2-hour tour through the 170 species of trees and shrubs at Marquand Park Saturday morning, June 11. The walk was sponsored by the Princeton Borough Shade Tree Commission, and co-sponsored by the Princeton Parks Alliance and the Princeton Township Shade Tree Commission. Attendees were treated to Machold’s lively narrative combining tree facts, folklore, and Princeton history. Thirteen-page color handouts showing major trees of the park were distributed to walkers as a gift from the Macholds. (More extensive versions of the tree booklets are sold at the Princeton Historical Society’s offices in Bainbridge House, on Nassau Street.)
Stepping off from the Lover’s Lane car park, walkers first identified the purple flowering Empress Tree (Paulonia Tomentosa), still a source for clogs and musical instruments in Asia; Shadblow Serviceberry (Amelanchier Canadensis) and Doublefile Virburnums (Viburnum Plicatum) within and surrounding the parking lot. Nearby stands a tall White Ash, (Fraxinia Americana), the species used famously for baseball bats; a Cucumber Magnolia (Magnolia Acuminata); and Norway spruces (Picea Abies), with characteristic curved trunks at the root, from which craftspersons shape the ribs of boats. Among other specimens identified on the first leg of the walk were Cedar of Lebanon (Cedus Libani), the supposed source of wood to construct Solomon’s Temple; White Pines (Pinus Strobus), Hemlocks, Hawthornes, the Golden Rain Tree (Koelreuteria Paniculata) with seed pods like small Japanese lanterns; a Kentucky Coffee Tree (Gymnocladus Dioicus), whose seed pods can be ground for a coffee substitute; Dawn Redwood (Metasequoia Glyptostroboides); a Franklinia Alatamaha (discovered by Revolutionary-era naturalist John Bartram, and named for his friend Benjamin Franklin), the Tupelo or black gum (Nyassa Silvatica), with wood so tough it cannot be split, so it was first choice for wagon wheels, and from whose flowers bees make the world’s most expensive honey; and White, Black and Red oaks dating from the 1850s. Magnolia Hill, planted with many colorful varieties, from Saucer (M. Soulangiana) and Southern (M. Grandiflora) to Cucumber (M. Acuminata) screens Stockton Street homes from the park, and a pine and conifer arboretum below offers specimens of Bald Cypress (Taxodium Distichum), which supplies the best and most expensive shingles in the world; Serbian Spruce, Himalayan Pine (Pinus Griffithii), Japanese Black Pine (Pinus Thunbergiana), the best evergreen for planting along the northeastern U. S. seashore; Incense cedar (Libocedrus Decurrens), used for cedar chests, and pencils; and the Cryptomeria Japonica, found in Japan’s heavy cedar forests, and known there as the “forest bathing tree.” Machold suggested circling the Cryptomeria a few times to refresh one’s self. Final tree stop on the tour was the Dove Tree (Davidia Involucrata), whose flowers consist of two six-inch long white bracts, resembling the wings of a dove. It’s also known as the handkerchief tree. The Macholds planted one on their property, and they waited 17 years until it bloomed. The couple said at first they mistook the limply draping blossoms for toilet tissue hung on the tree’s branches for a Halloween-style prank. PRH

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New York Trees

The Commissioners are so impressed by what the Central Park Conservancy has done with this tree map that we wanted to share it with you: Central Park Tree Map. The videos on Central Park's trails and the overview of the mapping project are particularly inspiring. The Borough Shade Tree Commissioners have recently completed their own "mapping" of the Borough's trees for our tree inventory, walking all of the streets and recording the species and condition of each and every street tree.

Consolloy William Street Walk

If you missed the William Street/ Princeton campus tree walk led by Jim Consolloy on July 22, 2010, here are some highlights:

(Expert guide Consolloy, recently retired after 21 years as Princeton University grounds manager, has completed the borough's first tree inventory update since 2001. During the summer of 2010, he traveled all 26 miles of borough streets, toting measuring tools and laptop to count and note the health of the Borough's estimated 3,000 street trees, defined as those growing between sidewalks and curbs.)

Consolloy led the walkers from the parking lot behind 158 Nassau St., turning left (east) onto William Street, which he chose for its remarkable variety of species. The group took a right on Olden, then another right on Shapiro Walk, between the Computer Science Building and Mudd Library, returning to William Street via the Princeton Press carpark lot.

View Princeton Shade Tree Walk #1 in a larger map

William Street is planted with Japanese Kwanzan cherry trees, as well as examples of London plane tree, sawtooth oak, chestnut oak, willow oak, shingle oak, scarlet oak, red maple, sugar maple, hornbeam, cucumber magnolia, tulip tree, honey locust, callery pear, Kashmir cedar, ginkgo, zelkova, and American elm, among others.

Consolloy pointed out identifying clues for each.

The favorite tree of the 1950s was the American Elm, with a beautiful vaselike silhouette. Beginning in the 1930s, Dutch elm disease had killed off 95% of American Elms, but the resistant strain planted in Princeton in the 1920s had a good survival record. A 300-year-old Princeton elm can be found in the borough cemetery. For new plantings today, you can safely choose the New Harmony Elm. The Accolade variety has the highest branches and grows very fast.

Elm trees should be pruned in the winter. If pruned in summer, the scent of cut wood attracts beetles.

Cucumber magnolia trees, like those around the Wilson fountain off Washington Street, are New Jersey natives. Unlike most flowering trees, they bloom AFTER the leaves appear, not before.  Tulip poplars are also magnolias, and among the tallest trees in New Jersey.

The locusts beside the Computer Science Building, on Olden, are the Skyline variety, with huge seedpods. The thorns have been bred away here, but the thorned variety can be seen across the street, in front of the Engineering Quadrangle. Those trees were called honey locusts because bees chose them for hives, since bears wouldn't climb past the thorns.

Most of the Linden trees on Princeton streets are Silver, Little Leaf, and Sterling Silver varieties. Our native lindens are the Redman and Basswood. European lindens are called Lime Trees, and they're used for perfume in France. The French also weave the bark strips into ropes.
 
Consolloy, answering tree care questions while walking, observed that Boston Ivy creeping up trunks is less hazardous to tree health than vines that twine and eventually strangle, such as wisteria.

If you find rolled up leaves on your trees, they have curled around galls laid by beneficial spiders. Don't destroy the spiders.

Among other flora tips from Consolloy: For this area, an attractive knee-high plant (ground cover) avoided by deer is low-growing sumac.

When watering plantings with watering cans during droughts, a couple drops of detergent per can will make the water wetter.

The tour ended with a break for dessert, using discount coupons contributed by Thomas Sweet Ice Cream.

Watch this space for more walks to come.        ----PRH
 
The July outing, sponsored by Princeton's Shade Tree Commission (www.pbshadetree.org), was one of the educational components of an urban Green Communities grant awarded to the Borough in 2008. A portion of this funding provided for updating the borough's 5-year forestry plan as well as the 2010 street tree survey.