Adopt a Tree

The information below is adapted from Arthur Plotnik's The Urban Tree Book, as well as Wikipedia, the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, and the Arbor Day Foundation. See full source list.

American Linden:

Family: Tiliaceae (Group of flowering plants)

Genus and species: Tilia (linden or basswood) Americana

Typical city location: streets, town squares, promenades, yards, parks

Love Sweet Love

Because of its heart-shaped leaves, perfumed fragrance and nectar-filled flowers, it was believed to be the tree of love and marriage.
In a Greek myth from Ovid's Metamorphoses, a poor husband and wife who were amazing hosts for a pair of strangers (Zeus and Hermes) were granted a wish to die together. The gods turned the husband into an oak and his wife into a linden, with branches intertwined.
Pregnant women used to hug them for good luck.

Biotic Buds

Aphids love to suck up its sugary sap, but in an effort to get enough amino acids out of the sap, the aphids suck up a lot more than they can hold and defecate the rest. This sweet aphid dropping is known as honeydew, which is a favorite food of ants, flies, moths and black mold. Other insects feed on the aphids themselves.
Bees also love linden nectar; the flowers need bees to pollinate them for two weeks in the spring.
Mites make horn-shaped homes on linden leaves.
Japanese beetles, caterpillars, lacebugs, and the basswood leaf roller also hang out on the leaves.

Oh the Humanitree!Hundreds of streets, avenues and even towns are named after this tree, which survives well in city environments.Native tribes used the inner bark to make a strong tea that helped with heartburn and lung problems. It was also used to make a strong rope.
The French make a calming tea from its blossoms and honey made from linden nectar is sold as a delicacy.
The soft wood is great for sculpting and has been used to make the slats of venetian blinds.
Some lindens have lived as long as 1,100 years!
FDR planted lindens at the White House.
While they need moist, well-drained, silt-loam soil for their long root structures, smaller street lindens can withstand average pollution and some drought and salt conditions.

Juneberry (Downy Serviceberry)

Family: Rosaceae (Rose)

Genus and species: Amelanchier arborea

Berrylicious:

The juneberry is native to Canada and the United States.Their 1/4-inch berries ripen to be reddish-purple and are adored by birds.
Although the wood is rarely used by humans, the juneberry is usually planted to provide flowers, habitat and food for wildlife. It also helps with erosion control.
These berries can be harvested to make jams and pies.
Native Americans used the berries to make bread.

Siberian Elm:

Family: Ulmaceae (Elms and zelkovas)

Genus and species: Ulmus pumila

Basics:

Their wind-pollinated flowers blossom in early spring before the leaves. The tree can even pollinate itself.
Their enemies include Dutch elm disease, elm leaf beetle, powdery mildew, cankers, aphids and leaf spot.

Oh the Humanitree!

Siberian elms are native to Central Asia, eastern Siberia, Mongolia, Tibet, northern China, India and Korea.
They were introduced to Spain in the 1500s where it started hyrbidizing with the field elms there.
In the early 1900s, Frank Meyer who worked for the USDA brought the Siberian elm to North Dakota. Many were planted to provide shelter from the winds of the Dustbowl. It did quite well, because it can grow quickly and survive drought and cold.

While the Siberian elm provides shade and shelter from the wind, it is not considered beautiful. As horticulturist Michael Dirr put it, it is "one of, if not the, world's worst trees... a poor ornamental that does not deserve to be planted anywhere." Do you agree?Elm trees are important timber trees for furniture.

Norway Maple:

Family: Aceraceae (Maple)

Genus and species: Acer (maple) platanoides

Typical city location: Most common urban maple in North America, streets, parks, yards, corporate grounds

Isn't She Lovely?

It boasts tiny bouquets of lemon-yellow flowers in spring, great summer shade, and long-lasting yellow or gold leaves in autumn.
The double-winged seed fruits are called samaras. They are about four inches across and look like the legs of a dancer doing a split.
It "bleeds" white - if you tear a fresh leafstalk, a milky white sap should ooze out.

Mortal Enemy

The Norway maple has been the best equipped of the maples to survive attacks from aphids, bladder gall mites, leafstalk borers, cottony maple scale, and even the dreaded verticillium wilt fungus.
But now the Asian longhorned beetle, which until 1996 was only found in Asia, has arrived. Its method of attack? Larvae burrow from holes in the bark into the heartwood in the center of the trunk. They come out as adults, leaving 3/8-inch tunnels that have destroyed the tree's inner tubes of cells for transporting water, sugar and nutrients.
The beetles' escape routes look like bullet holes where the trees bleed sap. City authorities have to send these trees to the chipper.

Oh the Humanitree!

It gets its name from its natural range in southern Norway, but it grows in forests throughout Europe, where it is planted for shade and harvested for timber.Philidelphia plant collectors started planting it in the mid-eighteenth century. Later, it was cross-bred to create more than 80 varieties called "cultivars."
Well-suited to American cities, the Norway maple can tolerate wind, frost, air pollution and a range of soil acidity. It's very common in the eastern, midwestern and northwestern states and dominates the landscape of NYC's Bronx, Queens and Staten Island.
However, its large, overlapping leaves create such solid shade that few other plants can grow underneath and it has sometimes escaped into nearby forests where it shades out some of the native plants. Also, its roots have been known to tip sidewalks.

Swamp White Oak:

Family: Fagaceae (Beech)

Genus and species: Quercus (oak) bicolor

Typical city location: Parks, campuses, golf courses, cemeteries, private homes and grounds

Just Divine

In ancient Greece and Rome, oaks appeared to be divine, since their damp, rotted interiors seemed to attract lightning.
The Celtic Druids chose oak groves as the sites of their holy ceremonies.

White vs. Red

While red oaks are easier to transplant and deal well with heavy traffic, white oaks like the bur oak is usually selected for a more special location, since it needs to have soil space for a deep taproot and sprawling surface roots.
White oaks grow slower and older than red oaks, which makes them even better witnesses of history.

Bur Oak:

Family: Fagaceae (Beech)

Genus and species: Quercus macrocarpa

Prairie Kings:

Bur oaks are a type of white oak that used to cover the North American prairies.They were well-suited for prairies, because they have a cork layer that protects the trunk and branches from prairie fires.

Flowering Dogwood:

Family: Cornaceae (Dogwood)

Genus and species: Cornus florida

Typical city location: Parks, gardens, yards, campuses, foundation plantings, entryways, southern residential streets.

Natural Interactions:

In forests, they play an important role in the understory, feeding dozens of wildlife species with bitter, mealy red berries.

They also have roots that are as big underground as the tree is above-ground, which helps them withstand windstorms and droughts.North American pioneers chopped down many bur oaks for their excellent wood and planted others for shade.
Today, they are common in Minneapolis, Denver, Boulder and Washington, D.C..

Strangely, the famous dogwood blossom (like the daisy) is an illusion. The "petals" are actually the outer scales of the flower bud that have stretched out. What looks like the center of the flower is actually a cluster of about a dozen of the actual - and flea-sized - dogwood flowers. If you look closely, you might notice that each of these mini flowers has its own petals and must be pollinated individually.The species's worst enemy is a fungus called dogwood anthracnose; it causes purple blotches and shriveled leaves and can spread to twigs and branches, killing the tree.

Oh the Humanitree!

State tree of Virginia and Missouri and the state flower of North Carolina.
Flowering dogwoods are native from Maine down to Florida and over to Texas, and they have been cultivated since about 1680. Today they are especially common in Washington, D.C. and Philadelphia.
Although they struggle to survive in urban environments, they are so ornamental that cultivators have worked for centuries to breed varieties that can withstand city stress.
Presidents from George Washington to Bill Clinton have admired and planted them. In fact, one flowering dogwood planted by our first president was still alive and blooming into the 1970s.

Daggers and Diarrhea Relief:

The name dogwood probably comes from old European words for dagger or skewer, since its wood is so hard and shock resistant that it made excellent pointed tools. It was also used to make cotton mill parts, cogwheels for old clocks, golf club heads, slingshots and piano keys.
Extracts from the dogwood were used to treat colic, diarrhea, and acid stomach. People also used to chew on the fibrous twigs as tooth polishers (though it may have damaged their gums).

Eastern Hophornbeam:

Family: Betulaceae (Birch)

Genus and species: Ostrya virginiana

Iron Man:

While its cousin, the birch, has distinctive white, peeling bark, the hophornbeam's bark is brown to gray-brown, with small shaggy plates flaking off.
Its buds and catkins (wind-
pollinated flowers) are important food for birds like the ruffled grouse. Its extremely hard wood has also earned it the names hardhack, ironwood, and leverwood.
Its resilient wood is used to make tool handles and fence posts.

Chinkapin Oak:

Family: Fagaceae (Beech)

Genus and species: Quercus muehlenbergii

It is a type of white oak and often grows around other oak trees. However, it can't stand being crowded and is intolerant of the shade.
They can often resprout after wildfires, but sometimes fungi infect their fire scars.

The chinkapin oak is known for its sweet and edible acorns, which can be eaten raw. The acorns are eaten by people, squirrels, mice, voles, chipmunks, deer, turkey, and other birds.The chinkapin is found sparsely across Wisconsin and Wisconsin forestry authorities say that it should be favored when found.

Page updated

Google Sites

Report abuse