Bob's tree in November

Bob's tree has no leaves at this time of year, but it has plenty of fruits.

Colors of late November

It's the end of November, and campus is still colorful.

The Peebles Island forest in late November

This is what the forest at Peebles Island looks like at this time of year.

Because the leaves have fallen, you can see farther through the forest. You can see the water. You can see where the paths leads. In many of the treetops, you can see clusters of leaves or twigs. These must be nests created by animals such as birds or squirrels.

Back in July, I usually saw deer when I went to Peebles Island.  Now I have not seen any deer for some time.

The forest floor is covered with oak leaves.

There are oak trees in this forest, but there are also other trees. Why do the leaves on the forest floor seem so predominantly oak? I looked closer, and I saw that there are also other leaves that are all shriveled up. I think the oak leaves are more noticeable than the leaves of other trees, because the oak leaves are not shriveled up.

There's an area in the forest where there's a lot of grass beside the trail.  Why is it grassy? Usually places don't stay grassy unless they are mowed regularly.  Do they come out to the middle of the woods and mow this place? Was there grass planted here in the past, when the island was more cultivated, and now it just stays grassy without any intervention?

Green grass

When spring comes, I notice the grass turning greener.  When does it lose its green?  It is still green now.

A stump at Peebles Island

Today at Peebles Island, I observed a stump. It had some fungi growing on it.

And also another kind of fungi.

They say you can tell the age of a tree by the rings, but I did not see rings. I saw cracks perpendicular to the way rings are supposed to go.

There was a chunk of wood that stuck out from the rest.

Mystery tree from November 9

On November 9, my attention was caught by trees near the parking garage entrance that were still bright with autumn color, when many other trees were past their peak.

They had distinctive buds

and distinctive fruit.

The leaves were pinnately veined.

How to identify this intriguing tree? The books that I got to help me identify unkown trees (What Tree is This and The Tree Identification Book) usually leave me frustrated.  What usually works is flipping through Trees of New York.  However, I could see that this was a cultivated tree, so I did not expect it to be in Trees of New York.  I expected it to be in The Sibley Guide to Trees, but that's a 400 page book.  How could I look through every page of that book until I found it?

Once I became aware of this type of tree, I realized that it was in other places I frequented (the Union, the quad between Lally and Sage, and downtown by the Atrium).

This is the one near Sage, photographed November 14:

I had four days off for Thanksgiving, so finally I looked through The Sibley Guide to Trees. I found it was not nearly as hard as I had feared.  There were some sections that were clearly not right, so I could skip those sections.  The tree that seemed to match was the Callery Pear.  It matches in this ways:

• Leaf shape.
• Leaf autumn color.
• Tree shape.
• Commonly cultivated.
• Late fall foliage.
• Fruit.  Actually, the fruit I saw on the trees was a little different from how it looked in the book, but it was the closest match compared to the fruits of other trees in the book.

Floodplains

I was just reading in Reading the Forested Landscape about floodplains.  It says the species found there are silver maple, sycamore, cottonwood, American elm, hackberry, box elder, and ostrich fern.  I often spend time at a floodplain, and those are indeed the species I see there.  The exceptions are 1) I don't particularly recall seeing elm, but it may have been there.  Elm is a tree I recognize, but not a tree that I focus on when I see it.  2) I have been focused on trees, and have not paid attention to ferns, so I don't know if ostrich fern is there. A lot of the area is cultivated, with grass, but I think there is another part that has ferns. 3) There is also a large weeping willow tree in that area.  Perhaps it was not mentioned in the book because it is not naturally occurring in such locations.  It seems plausible that it was planted there, since it is a nice-looking tree.

A gray November day at Peebles Island

Today at Peebles Island, I was drawn to the tree that is on the right in this picture:

I think the reason I was drawn to it was because it had so many little twigs silhouetted against the sky that it looked feathery.  The tree drew me, so in order to get closer to it, I climbed down to the riverbank, and walked along the muddy shore of a little side channel.  When I was across the channel from the tree, I went to take a picture.  When I put the tree in the center of the photo, there was another small tree on the right that did not look right artistically.  When I shifted the view toward the left, another tree came into view on the left and made a more balanced composition, so that's the photo I took.  I did not look closely at either tree, but based on the brown samaras on the tree on the left, I figured it was a boxelder.  I do not know what the tree on the right was.

This photo shows what I consider a stereotypical November day: bare trees and a gray sky.

As I said, I was on the shore of a small side channel off the river.  There I could see the remains of a tree.  Judging by the girth and the bark, I called it a cottonwood tree.  One piece that was mostly still covered with bark lay on the opposite bank.  Another piece which had lost most of its bark lay across the channel.  They appear to be part of the same tree, but are they really? Why does one piece have bark and the other does not? Could it be that when the water is higher, it washes over the one that goes across, thus washing away the bark?  There also seemed to be more moss on the part that had little bark.  I don't think that is because moss prefers to grow where there is no bark, because the parts with the most moss were the parts with the most bark. If my theory about the water washing over it is true, maybe the moss prefers the moister environment.

With my camera, I zoomed in on part of the tree across the bank.  It kind of reminds me of a dragon.

The barkless branches going across the channel look like strange creatures too.  They seem to have antlers.

Behind me, on the same side of the channel where I stood, was this dead snag.

It looks quite magnificent reaching for the sky.  What kind of tree is it? How did it die? And how did the cottonwood die?  I have been reading in Reading the Forested Landscape about how to deduce the cause of death. I have only read enough to cause me to wonder, not enough to be able to come to any conclusions.  Two causes of death mentioned, logging and fire, seem unlikely.  More likely causes of death that I've read about are disease and beavers.

The book said that hemlock has the most rot resistant bark, so the bark will remain as the outside rots.  So I think this one is not a hemlock.  But that is no surprise.  The hemlocks on Peebles Island tend not to be this big.  The books talk about some trees rotting from the inside out, some from the outside in, and some uniformly throughout.  I don't know how rotted this one may be on the inside, but the outside seems to be in pretty good condition, so let's say it rots from the inside out.  The book lists oak, locust, and American chestnut as trees which rot from the inside out.

The book says that beavers will fell the trees they eat, but will girdle conifers it does not want to eat in order to make space for trees they prefer to grow up.  Was this tree girdled by a beaver?

A close-up view of this snag shows smooth wood with parallel spiral lines.

Although it's not evident in this picture, there were numerous round holes in the trunk.  Are they from woodpeckers or insects?  I noticed them especially toward the bottom of the trunk.

Norway maple leaves fall

A week ago, I posted photos of the yellow leaves on the Norway maples by my balcony.   Over the course of the week, these leaves have fallen.

November 15, 2011

November 17, 2011

November 18, 2011

November 19, 2011

Some leaves remain on Japanese and Norway maples

This was the seen on my way to work today.  Some leaves remain on Japanese maple and Norway maple.

Maple and crabapple leaves have fallen, elms are yellow

The crabapples have lost their leaves, so the crabapple trees are red with fruit.  The Norway maple to the right of the spruce has lost its leaves, as have the red maples behind the Norway maple.  To the right, we can see that the elms are now yellow.  They were green when the red maples were red.

Japanese maples in November

Following up on my November 9 post, here is how three different Japanese maples are looking today:

This is the one that was looking green on October 21, and a mix of green, red, and orange on November 9.

This one still looks pretty much the same as it did on November 9.

This morning on my way to work, this Japanese maple was one of two trees looking colorful. Most trees are bare except Norway maple and oak, and Norway maple and oak are not so bright.

Crabapples in autumn

With the coming of fall, the crabapple fruits ripened, then the leaves started to turn yellow, then the leaves fell.

September 23:

October 5:

October 6:

October 11:

October 24:

On October 27, it snowed.

By October 28, the snow was melting.

November 7: When seen from a distance, the trees looked yellow in October, but now as the yellow leaves fall and the red fruits remain, the trees start to look red from the distance.

November 10: