White pine

The people of New Hampshire and Maine think we fought the American Revolutionary War over pine trees. Not tea. Not taxation without representation. Pine trees. There is some merit to their opinion. The Pine Tree Riot of 1772 was one of the first acts of rebellion leading to the American Revolution.

Why would anyone riot over white pines, the suburban misfit tree that is always ready to drop a heavy limb, sticky with resin, every time the wind gusts? The trees had enormous monetary value in the 18th century. They were the prize trees of the New England forests.

Forest-grown white pines, unlike their suburban counterparts, have a tall, straight trunk that is largely free of branches until it reaches the canopy. They were the tallest trees in the eastern forests.(1) They were also perfect for making ships' masts: long, straight, light, and strong. England, largely deforested since the 16th century, was desperate for mast wood. The English began using white pine, an American native, almost as soon as that species was discovered.(2) The Crown claimed ownership of all white pines over 12 inches in diameter, including those on private property. Attempts at enforcement of that claim ran counter to a large and important colonial industry and led to the Pine Tree Riot in Weare, New Hampshire in 1772, a year before the Boston Tea Party.

Freed of the Crown's constraints after the Revolution, Americans could harvest white pines freely. By about 1900 the once vast stands of white pines had been levelled, the resource depleted. Ironically, reforestation efforts required importing seedling trees from Europe, which had grown its own white pines from American seeds.(3) The seedlings came with a stowaway, white pine blister rust, a serious pest. White pine blister rust remains an important threat to white pines today.

The most serious threat to white pines in Plainfield's suburban landscape is the wind. White pines are quite susceptible to storm damage and drop limbs in all seasons. Many of Plainfield's white pines are battle-scarred. The Cushing Road pine pictured above has a raggedly torn limb remnant that appears to be about 18 inches in diameter. How to cope with this breakage problem if you are blessed with the presence of a large white pine on your property?(4) You don't have to cut the tree down. The longest branches can be tipped back by an arborist every two to three years. The shortened limbs absorb less wind energy and are much less likely to break. If this sort of pruning is skillfully done, the tree looks quite natural.

(1) A white pine on the site of Dartmouth College was reported to be 240 feet tall. Donald Culross Peattie, A Natural History of North American Trees, Houghton Mifflin 2007, p. 28.

(2) Before they had white pine, the English had had to piece masts together out of Scotch pine. White pine masts could be "single stick" masts. The first English lumber mill in America was built in Maine in 1623. White pine had many uses beyond shipbuilding, and white pine lumbering developed into a large and very profitable industry in New England. White pine lumber paid for sugar, rum, and slaves. For more details see Sam Cox, White Pine Blister Rust, The Story of White Pine, American Revolution, Lumberjacks, and Grizzly Bears, http://landscapeimagery.com/wphistory.html

(3) Sam Cox, cited above.

(4) A clue to distinguishing white pines from other pines likely to be found in this area is the fact that white pine needles are bundled in groups of five.

Copyright Gregory Palermo

Ailanthus altissima, the Tree that Grows in Brooklyn

Like the Dodgers, ailanthus trees will always be linked to Brooklyn, no matter where else we find them. The trees are scrappers; they grow just about anywhere they want to grow. But was it possible that I was seeing one on the sacred ground of Leiden's 16th century Hortus Botanicus, the oldest botanical garden in northern Europe? In the garden of Clusius, who introduced tulips to Holland? In the tiny Leiden botanical garden, with room for only the choicest specimens? There it was. And not a bad-looking tree at all! The surprise of seeing an ailanthus in the Leiden botanical garden made me look for attractive examples in Plainfield. And I found some.

The ailanthus at 605 Richmond Avenue is nicely shaped and has a trunk diameter of more than two feet.

At 434 E. Second Street on the Richmond side there is another ailanthus with a larger crop of seeds. Ailanthus seeds come in yellow-green or yellow-orange and are quite attractive. The foliage is also handsome.

Ailanthus altissima (tree of heaven) is a Chinese import. Of all the trees imported from China, ailanthus is the most widely naturalized in America.(1) It is a phenomenally successful weed. We associate it with Brooklyn because of its role in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. Ailanthus is the tree of the novel's title, an apt symbol of poor but tough strivers making their way in a harsh environment. What makes ailanthus such a success? It tolerates heat, cold, and urban pollution. It has no trouble at all growing out of cracks in sidewalks, "the only tree that grew out of cement" in the words of the novel. It produces prodigious numbers of seeds. One mature tree can produce 350,000 of them.(2) Ailanthus is a fierce competitor. Its leaves produce a toxin that inhibits the growth of many other plants. Finally, Ailanthus owes part of its success to the fact that it is so hard to get rid of. If you have ever cut one down, you know that the reward for your efforts is several new plants in different spots, each a shoot from the roots of the felled tree.(3) Dan Damon's Plainfield Today recently cited a plausible but fanciful quotation from The Reagan Diaries that had Reagan referring to George W. Bush as a "ne'er-do-well son".(4) Had Reagan been Chinese, he might have called George W a ch'un-ts'ai, a "good-for-nothing ailanthus stump sprout", a common reproach for ne'er-do-well Chinese youths or underachieving students.(5)

Ailanthus has at times enjoyed a better reputation than the one it has now. The tree was used by Frederick Law Olmstead, designer of Central Park (whose firm later designed Plainfield's Cedarbrook Park).(6) Charles Sargent, founder of Harvard's Arnold Arboretum, wrote in 1888, "for hardiness and rapidity of growth, for the power to adapt to the dirt and smoke, the dust and drought of cities, for the ability to thrive in the poorest soil, for beauty and for usefulness, this tree is one of the most useful which can be grown in this climate...."(7) Ailanthus trees are all around town. The females are easy to spot these days because they are laden with seeds.(8) Note 8 below provides clues that will allow you to identify them in any season.

(1) Shiu Ying Hu, Ailanthus, Arnoldia 39: 29-50, 1979.

(2) Arthur Plotnik, The Urban Tree Book, Three Rivers Press, 2000.

(3) Whoever concocted the myth of Antaeus, the giant whose strength redoubled each time that Hercules threw him to the ground, must have known a weed like Ailanthus altissima.

(4) "Myths are stories that are so true they can never happen." Charles Van Doren, quoted in Columbia College Today, September 1999 issue.

(5) Shih Ying Hu, cited above. As ailanthus stump sprout is used as a metaphor for a spoiled youth, mature ailanthus tree is used as a metaphor for a father.

(6) Arthur Plotnik, cited above.

(7) Shih Ying Hu, cited above.

(8) Male and female flowers are borne on separate trees. The female trees bear seeds, visible now. The leaves are compound, made up of multiple leaflets, each about 5 inches in length. When crushed the leaves have an odor that many people find unattractive. Two features allow you to distinguish ailanthuses from similar plants such as walnuts or sumacs. 1) Each ailanthus leaflet has two to four blunt teeth near its base. 2) Although paired, many of the leaflets are not exactly opposite each other. In the winter the large and distinctive leaf scar helps with identification. Click on photos to enlarge.

Copyright Gregory Palermo

Plane trees

Handel's famous "Largo", best known as ecclesiastical music, began life as a love song --- to a plane tree. The title character of Handel's opera Xerxes makes a fool of himself in the opening act, pouring out his love to a plane tree in the aria "Ombra mai fu", (Never sweeter was the shade of any dear and lovable plant.) Not the first time or the last that the Persians would get bad press in the West or that someone would fall in love with a tree.(1)

Xerxes' beloved plane tree was an Oriental plane tree, one of the parents of the London plane tree that is common on the streets of Plainfield. The other parent is the American sycamore. The two parent species diverged at least 50 million years ago. They evolved separately thousands of miles apart, but were brought together in 17th Century European botanical gardens, where they produced hybrid offspring: the London plane tree.(2) Plane trees get special notice in botany textbooks under the heading, "What is a species?" As a rule, members of a species produce fertile offspring by breeding only with each other, not with members of other species. London plane is an exception to that rule. Like mules, London planes have parents of two different species. Unlike mules, London planes are fertile.

Why "London" plane? During the sooty days of the industrial revolution, the trees were planted in large numbers in London because of their great pollution tolerance. The trees' peeling bark helps them shed damaging pollutants.(3) Sixty percent of London's street trees are said to be London plane trees.(4)

City Councilman Rashid Burney drew my attention to the plane trees of Cedarbrook Avenue. I haven't heard him singing, but I have heard him wax quite lyrical on the subject. Cedarbrook Avenue's street trees are almost all mature plane trees. Their branches merge to form a cathedral-like vault of foliage for almost the entire length of the street. Even when the trees are leafless, they sustain visual interest with their multicolored, peeling bark and the regular rhythm of their placement as one progresses along the street.

The hybrid London plane tree is used in preference to the American sycamore for street tree planting because it is slightly smaller and more disease-resistant. Most of Plainfield's plane trees are London planes, not sycamores. It can be difficult to tell the two species apart.(5) I would identify the two young plane trees on Hillside Avenue between 1108 Hillside and Thornton Avenue as sycamores. Note 5 below provides criteria for speciation.

American sycamores become hollow after about 100 years of age.(6) In centuries past, their hollow trunks provided ready-made barrels; larger trees served as temporary housing.(6) The trees continue to grow for centuries after becoming hollow, producing the largest-diameter trunks of any American hardwood.(7) George Washington measured a sycamore in Ohio at about 13 feet in diameter.(8) The most dramatic account of the huge size of a sycamore was left by John James Audubon. I quote him at length, his words as lyrical as either Xerxes' or Burney's. He describes the early morning exit of a great flock of chimney swallows (chimney swifts) from the hollow trunk of a gigantic sycamore in which they had spent the night:

"Next morning I rose early enough to reach the place long before the least appearance of daylight, and placed my head against the tree. All was silent within. I remained in that posture probably twenty minutes, when suddenly I thought the great tree was giving way, and coming down upon me. Instinctively I sprung from it, but when I looked up to it again, what was my astonishment to see it standing as firm as ever. The Swallows were now pouring out in a black continued stream. I ran back to my post, and listened in amazement to the noise within, which I could compare to nothing else than the sound of a large wheel revolving under a powerful stream. It was yet dusky, so that I could hardly see the hour on my watch, but I estimated the time which they took in getting out at more than thirty minutes. After their departure, no noise was heard within, and they dispersed in every direction with the quickness of thought."(9)

(1) Herodotus' original telling has Xerxes adorning the tree with gold and setting a guardian over it in perpetuity.

(2) Peter H. Raven, Ray F. Evert, and Susan E. Eichhorn, Biology of Plants, W.H. Freeman and Company Worth Publishers, Sixth edition, 1999, p. 248. The "x" in the scientific name, Platanus x acerifolia, indicates a hybrid species. The oriental plane tree, Platanus orientalis, is native to southern Europe and Anatolia. The American sycamore, Platanus occidentalis, is native to eastern North America.

(3) Colin Tudge, The Tree: A Natural History of What Trees Are, How They Live, and Why They Matter, Crown Publishing, 2006, p. 157. Another feature that makes London plane suitable for street tree use is its ability to withstand extensive and even brutal pruning. Pollarding (maintaining the major limbs as short stubs by severe yearly pruning) is unusual in the U.S., but Europeans don't hesitate to pollard plane trees to restrain their size. Rows of pollarded plane trees are a very common sight in European cities.

(4) Arthur Plotnik, The Urban Tree Book, Three Rivers Press, 2000, p. 63.

(5) The most reliable criterion for speciation is the fruits, which occur singly on sycamores and in pairs on London planes. In addition, the leaves of sycamores are less deeply lobed, and their bark is said to be whiter. Although smaller than American sycamores, London planes are not small. The two tallest hardwood trees in Britain are London planes according to Thomas Parkenham (in Meetings with Remarkable Trees, Random House, 1997, p. 78).

(6) Donald Culross Peattie, A Natural History of North American Trees, Houghton Mifflin, 2007, p. 373.

(7) Peattie, cited above, p. 372.

(8) Peattie, cited above, p. 373. The same tree was also measured twenty years later by the great French botanist and explorer Andre Michaux. Peattie cites the largest sycamore on record as having been measured in 1802 at 47 feet in circumference, about 15 feet in diameter at breast height.

(9) John James Audubon, "The Chimney Swallow", excerpt from The Birds of America, quoted at greater length in Ohio-Birds: http://www.ohiobirds.org/news.php?News_ID=108

Copyright Gregory Palermo

Japanese Pagoda Tree

Dr. David Hosack is best known to history for the death of a famous patient. He ministered to Alexander Hamilton after Hamilton's duel with Aaron Burr. But Hosack had more success as high-profile botanist than high-profile physician. This Columbia College professor established the country's first botanical garden in 1801. His garden, now the site of Rockefeller Center, contained the first Japanese pagoda tree recorded in the U.S.(1) The original tree no longer exists, but Japanese pagoda trees have had a successful career in this country as shade trees.

Plainfield has small numbers of pagoda trees scattered around town as street trees, and they are in bloom now. The largest example I know is on Central Avenue between Second and Front Streets against Cooper's Office Furniture store. This nicely shaped tree has a trunk diameter of more than two feet.

Another handsome example is in the curbside strip at 1325 Evergreen Avenue, just to the right of the front walk as you face the house.

In the 1100 block of Park Avenue, opposite 1106, is another attractive pagoda tree, photographed in bloom on July 25.

Pagoda trees have been cultivated in the Orient for thousands of years. They were often planted near Buddhist temples. A gracefully shaped tree with delicate, feathery foliage, the pagoda tree is largely pest-free and is tolerant of dry soil and pollution --- very well suited to be a street tree. It offers the great advantage of flowering in midsummer, when few other trees are in bloom. Its fruit also is ornamental, resembling a bright green string of shrink-wrapped peas.

The tree grows quite large. Martha's Vineyard claims to have the oldest and largest example in North America. The island's giant pagoda tree was transported from the Orient in a flower pot in 1837 by a sea captain. He planted it in front of his new house in the center of Edgartown, where it still stands. The tree now has a diameter of about 7 feet at breast height. The telephone pole in the photograph passing between two of the tree's limbs provides a sense of scale.

The Japanese pagoda tree has a confusing overabundance of names. The tree originates from China, not Japan, and is also known as Chinese scholar tree. To add to the confusion, the botanical name was changed several years ago from Sophora japonica to Styphnolobium japonicum.

More on Bradford pears:

John Louise, chief of the Plainfield Shade Tree Bureau, tells me that his men don't call Bradford pears by their name. They call them "overtime trees". Another one of them split recently in front of 1433 Evergreen Avenue, losing a large limb. The wound, depicted below, shows bark trapped in what was the tight angle between limb and trunk. That trapped bark prevented the wood of those two parts from knitting together to make a solidly constructed tree, leading to the splitting so typical of Bradford pears.

Ashes:

The New York Times recently ran a front-page article on the existential threat to the baseball bat tree posed by an insect pest, emerald ash borer. I plan a posting on Plainfield's ashes and would appreciate hearing about noteworthy specimens.

(1) Leslie Turek "Plants in Historic Landscapes", Radcliffe Seminars, 1995 (http://www.leslie-turek.com/LandscapePapers/PagodaTree.html)

Copyright Gregory Palermo

Bradford pear, beautiful but breakable

How do we love thee? Let me count the ways. For thy beautiful (if malodorous) white flowers in April! For thy symmetry, thy cone-shaped crown! For thy rapid growth!

Bradford pear (Pyrus calleryana 'Bradford') is surely one of the most popular trees for planting in the eastern United States. But our collective passion for this tree leads to broken hearts, not lasting relationships. Bradford pear is genetically programmed for a short life that often ends catastrophically.

The tree splits apart in storms because of the way it is constructed. The limbs extend out from the trunk at very narrow angles. This tight-angled branching pattern traps bark between trunk and limb. Instead of knitting together as they grow, the trunk and limb are separated by bark, with no bond holding them together. If they don't split, Bradford pears can be expected to live for about 30 years.(1) Many disappear because of splitting long before reaching that age.

The Bradford pear at 937 Hillside Avenue was planted 10-12 years ago. The photograph above shows its condition after loss of one of its three major limbs in the fall of 2006. Notice that the other two limbs have begun to split apart. The photograph below shows the tree from the other side. The crack follows the line of trapped bark.

Below: the same tree on June 7, 2007.

Below: The same tree three weeks later.

Its neighbor at 930 Hillside, planted at the same time and pictured below, has been reinforced by steel bolts to help to hold it together. It illustrates the good looks that make Bradford pears so popular. Notice the narrow-angle branching.



The tree at the top of the page, on West Fourth Street just west of Plainfield Avenue, is rather a long-term survivor. It was planted in about 1990 by a civic group in front of what was then the Plainfield Health Center building as part of a beautification project. City Councilman Elliott Simmons was one of the planners and planters of that project (but the blame for the choice of Bradford pear falls on me, not on Councilman Simmons).

Also still attractive is a row of Bradford pears on Leland Avenue at Cook School.

The Bradford pears on the Randolph Road side of Muhlenberg Hospital have not done quite as well. They look like a row of amputees. In fairness, it appears that not all of the amputations were spontaneous. I would guess that someone has pruned some of them to try to prevent splitting. That sort of pruning is not at all easy to do in an effective and attractive way because all of the major limbs typically spring from the trunk at roughly the same height above ground. Worse, as the tree gets larger, those closely spaced branch points intersect each other. The corrective pruning, to the extent that it can be done, tends to eliminate the symmetry of the crown that is one of the tree's attractions.

The name "Bradford pear" looks as American as apple pie, but this Bradford shares no bloodlines with the governor of the colony at Plymouth. The tree is a Chinese import. Although Bradford pear is sterile, attempts to breed less split-prone varieties of Pyrus calleryana have yielded trees that are capable of reproduction. They interbreed with Bradford pear and their brood has become an invasive pest.(2)

Lou Dobbs hasn't tuned into this Chinese threat yet, but the USDA Forest Service hasn't missed it, recently honoring the trees as "Weed of the Week".(3) Invasive.org, a joint program of the University of Georgia and the USDA, offers this(4): "Do not plant Bradford pear. Seedlings and shallow-rooted plants can be pulled when soil is moist. Small trees need to be dug up or pulled out...ensuring removal of the root system. Large trees should be cut down and stumps treated with an appropriate systemic herbicide...or ground up to prevent resprouting. If cutting is not possible, trees can be girdled...by cutting through the bark all around the trunk, about 6" above the ground." How do we kill thee? Let me count the ways.

1 http://www.invasive.org/eastern/midatlantic/pyca.html

2 http://www.invasive.org/eastern/midatlantic/pyca.html

3 http://www.na.fs.fed.us/fhp/invasive_plants/weeds/callery_pear.pdf

4 http://www.invasive.org/eastern/midatlantic/pyca.html

Copyright Gregory Palermo

Cedars, gods, and Gilgamesh

From far off they saw the Cedar Mountain,
sacred to Ishtar, where the gods dwell,
the slopes of it steep, and rich in cedars
with their sharp fragrance and pleasant shade.(1)

The most stately of trees, the cedars should be used only as specimen plants, according to tree guru Michael Dirr.(2) The handsome cedar at Evergreen School is used just that way. Standing alone on the lawn and set against the backround of the brick building, the tree catches our eye and invites our admiration. Still somewhat youthful, the cedar has not yet developed the broadening and horizontality of its crown that come with advancing age. Cedars live for many hundreds of years. Give it time.

The cedar's majestic beauty is complemented by rich biblical, historic, and literary associations. The Phoenicians built their ships of decay-resistant cedar of Lebanon and carried on an export trade in the wood. The Palermo Stone --- I couldn't resist --- provides the earliest written record of international timber trade. It documents the transport of 40 shiploads of cedar logs from Lebanon to Egypt in about 2600 B.C.(3) The First Book of Kings relates that Solomon's temple was built using cedar supplied by the Phoenician King Hiram of Tyre. Cedar wood was quite valuable in the ancient world, as can be gleaned from the words of Humbaba, the monster charged with guarding the sacred cedar forest in The Epic of Gilgamesh:

Gilgamesh, have mercy.

Let me live here in the Cedar Forest.

If you spare my life I will be your slave.

I will give you as many cedars as you wish.

You are king of Uruk by the grace of Shamash,

honor him with a cedar temple

and a glorious cedar palace for yourself.

All this is yours, if only you spare me.(4)

Cedars of Lebanon have been under attack by man in their native range at least since the time of Gilgamesh, 4700 years ago. The only serious attempt to protect the trees from ruthless exploitation until very recent times was made by the Roman emperor Hadrian, who placed boundaries around the cedar forests and declared them his imperial domain. Lebanon, whose flag includes an image of a cedar, has only a few square miles of cedar forest left.(5)

None of the native American trees that we commonly refer to as red or white cedar is a true cedar (genus Cedrus). Our "cedars" are junipers, arborvitae, false cypresses and others. The true cedars are all imports: cedar of Lebanon and its subspecies Atlas cedar and deodar cedar.(6) Atlas cedars, from the mountains of northern Africa, are quite common in our area, represented mostly by varieties with blue-grey foliage called blue Atlas cedars. There is a blue Atlas cedar on the Evergreen Avenue side of 1040 Hillside Avenue.

In nearby Middlesex County the weeping form of blue Atlas cedar enjoys enormous popularity; it is frequently found ornamenting curbside mailboxes.

The most striking example of weeping blue Atlas cedar I have seen, on Park Avenue in South Plainfield, looms over the sidewalk like a giant praying mantis waiting to snatch up and devour an unsuspecting passerby.

Deodar cedar is native to the Himalayas and is the national tree of Pakistan. I would identify the Evergreen School cedar as a deodar because of its long, flexible needles. The name deodar is Hindi and comes from Sanskrit devadaru "divine wood", another link between cedars and the gods.(7) I have stood in the shade of a cedar with a trunk diameter of 10 feet and felt the divine connection myself. Do we dare to use these trees as mailbox adornments?

(1) Gilgamesh, A New English Version, translated by Stephen Mitchell, Free Press, 2004, page 118.

(2) Manual of Woody Landscape Plants, Michael Dirr, Stipes Publishing, 1998, page 197.

(3) Peter Ian Kuniholm, Wood, in The Oxford Encyclopedia of Archaeology in the Near East, Eric Meyers, ed., New York, Oxford University Press, 1997, http://www.arts.cornell.edu/dendro/wood.html

(4) Gilgamesh, page 125.

(5) Rania Masri, 1995, The Cedars of Lebanon: Significance, Awareness, and Management of the Cedrus Libani in Lebanon, http://almashriq.hiof.no/lebanon/300/360/363/363.7/transcript.html

The Epic of Gilgamesh poet as proto-environmentalist? Some commentators, including Rania Masri, make the case that Gilgamesh's cutting of the sacred cedars was intended to portray man's first great crime against the environment. They suggest that the gods forbade human entry to the Cedar Forest because they knew that humans would destroy the forest.

(6) I have taken the approach of the "lumpers", that there is one cedar species, cedar of Lebanon, and that Atlas and deodar cedars are geographic variants. Some botanists regard Atlas and deodar cedars as separate species, Cedrus atlantica and Cedrus deodara.

(7) For etymology aficionados: Hindi deodar from Sanskrit devadaru, "divine wood". The first half of the word is related to our words divine, deity, deus, and Zeus. The second half is related to durum, druid, tree, and true.

Copyright Gregory Palermo

Dawn redwood (Metasequoia glyptostroboides)

Those who think of New Jersey as home to such phenomena as the Sopranos, suburban sprawl, and pay-to-play politics should know this: the Garden State is also home to the best collection of dawn redwoods in the country. Matthew Belsky of Skidmore College, who keeps track of such things(1), finds six of the country's ten biggest, best, and oldest dawn redwoods within the borders of New Jersey. (You might not find one on the grounds of the Bada Bing! Club --- four of the best trees are in Princeton --- but dawn redwoods can be found if you look.) We have a few dawn redwoods in Plainfield. The most easily visible dawn redwood I know of in town is at 527 Belvidere Avenue between Seventh Street and South Avenue.

City Councilman Cory Storch made me aware of a dawn redwood that I had previously missed at 701 Belvidere Avenue. The tree is next to the driveway on Ravine Road.

A former owner of 1165 Hillside Avenue tells me that the dawn redwood in the backyard (visible over the roof of the house) was planted in the mid-1960s.

Dawn redwoods and bald cypresses both lose their needles in winter. The two species are distinguishable from one another by a few easily recognizable features. Dawn redwoods have "armpits" beneath their large branches, giving the trunk a heavily buttressed appearance. For the most part, dawn redwood twigs appear opposite each other roughly parallel to the ground; bald cypress twigs are arrayed in a spiral around the branch as seen in the end-on photograph below.

Also, dawn redwoods have larger leaves. The foliage is shown at about 1.3 times the actual size.

The photograph shows that the dawn redwood's leaves are opposite each other. If you hold a bald cypress twig almost up to your nose, you can see that its leaves are alternate, not opposite.

Bald cypresses are hard to find around here. Ambleside Gardens on Route 206 in Hillsborough has one that was planted in 1966 just inside the entrance to the nursery. There is another at 6 Calvert Avenue East in Edison, just off Grove Avenue.

Dawn redwood buttressing is well seen in a tree planted in 1949 at Princeton's Marquand Park. The size-reference dog in the photograph weighs 52 lbs.

As the photograph shows, the base of a mature dawn redwood spreads to become quite massive. This feature limits the usefulness of the species as a street tree. Maplewood, however, has used them as street trees since the 1950s and is rather well-known for its dawn redwoods. In my experience, young dawn redwoods are not at all tolerant of drought, another serious limitation for street tree use.

Dawn redwood was first discovered as a fossil in 1941 by a Japanese scientist working in occupied China during World War II. He assumed that the tree had been extinct for millions of years and created the first genus for an extinct plant, Metasequoia. In the same year, a Chinese scientist who had fled to China's remote interior to escape the Japanese invasion discovered a living example of an unfamiliar tree, identified five years later as the same species as the fossil dawn redwood. Seeds were sent to Harvard's Arnold Arboretum and distributed from there around the U.S. in 1948. The growth of dawn redwoods is legendarily fast. The tallest dawn redwood in this country is 140 feet tall, but the tree is not yet 70 years old.

(1) http://www.skidmore.edu/gis/research/metasequoia/TopTrees.htm

Copyright Gregory Palermo