New York City December Trees

Twelfth Night has been and gone, so although it is really far too late to write about Christmas I am now going to tell you something about a short family visit to New York, between Christmas and New Years Eve.

In Manhattan I have always been struck by the two very different approaches to Christmas decorations: on the one hand, you see the very formal, minimalist ones- a few lonely, outsize Christmas tree baubles or a whole store wrapped in a giant red Christmas bow- on the other hand the delightfully romantic way every tree is delicately entwined with Christmas lights, turning the streets into fairyland. It is the latter visual experience that I want to share, so here are some images:



Having lovely memories of a Christmas spent here 14 years ago, I was eager to show my granddaughter the iconic scene of the Rockefeller Center with its skating rink and Christmas Tree. Unfortunately, when we reached it- after time spent in MOMA- she was fast asleep! But that didn't stop me enjoying the lights- although the crowds were so dense you could barely see the skaters:





Needless to say, I cannot visit New York without going into Central Park. I find it fascinating that the concept of this park was largely that of a 19th Century visionary, Frederick Law Olmsted. He was multi-talented with varied, enlightened careers- a prolific landscape architect among others. In this industrial age, he understood the need to both protect the natural phenomena- such as the Niagara Falls and Yosemite National Park- and to create parks within cities. It was he who had the vision of Boston's Emerald Necklace as well as being co-designer- with Calvert Vaux- of Central Park, which was built between 1857 and 1873.

I like this quote of his from 1870: "We want a ground to which people may easily go when the day's work is done, and where they may stroll for an hour, seeing, hearing, and feeling nothing of the bustle and jar of the streets where they shall, in effect, find the city put far away from them..."




The above photos were taken on this last December visit, when the weather was comparatively mild for New York- if not compared with left-behind sunny Los Angeles- whereas the next two were taken last year on a freezing February day...



Another fact I like about Central Park: in these days when we see so much needless destruction of trees, it is good to know that here the trees are valued and protected, as I read in a New York Times article in 2009. Film director Brett Ratner was filming a segment in Central Park for "New York, I love You". Although there are some 26,000 trees there, a filmmaker is not allowed to touch a single leaf. Because of this, Mr Ratner had to provide his own prop tree together with a crane to support it while his leading lady "shivering in a pink cocktail dress, dangled from a branch"!

Now THAT is the way to respect trees!

The King Palm

The King Palm- Archontophoenix Alexandrae- is a native of the rainforest regions of North East Australia but seems to flourish in Santa Monica and Los Angeles. It can grow from 50- 80 feet high with a spread of 10-15 feet of its pinnate leaves, the single grey trunk being attractively ringed.

When I first became aware of these elegant trees, I was totally enchanted by their exotic "chandeliers" of flowers, on coral-like stems, so was not surprized to learn that they were named as the King of Palms:







These ivory or magenta flowers are succeeded by wonderful cascades of brilliant red berries:








I love their bright, lime green crownshafts, speckled with reddish-brown:



And eventually the brown overtakes the green...


Palm trees may not be as environmentally indispensable as many other trees (after all, they are officially PLANTS rather than trees) but to me they are certainly visually indispensable...

Falling Fall Leaves....

Since joining Santa Monica's Treesavers in 2007, I have been lucky to have met and befriended a variety of wonderful, people, all caring deeply about trees in different ways.

After a recent meeting, Kathy- one of our valuable members- sent us all the following email. I was so enchanted by the way she was able to express her heartfelt delight in her experience- an experience I totally empathized with- that I wanted to share it with my readers:

Subject: Great Experience on the Way Home

Hi Everyone - Thank you again to Treesavers for getting me out of my house on this beautiful day! Not only was it beautiful driving to our meeting, but on the way home I went down 14th street from Pico to Ocean Park Blvd. The trees were amazing - it was like a moving art show! The sunlight was streaming through the orange, red, yellow fall leaves on the trees, but also the trees were dropping a leaf at a time. The leaves would move through the breeze slowly and then land on the street. It was a constant movement all the way down the street. Wish I had a video camera with me! If you get a chance in the next few days, drive down 14th between Pico and Ocean Park Blvd. when the sun is shining through the trees. It is beautiful!
That was a great meeting today. I came away with a good feeling.
Thanks everyone for your wonderful dedication to raising peoples awareness of the wonderfulness of trees. You sure raised mine!
- Kathy


A few days later we received this next email, completing the story after Kathy had shown the trees to Joe, another great Treesaver:

Hi Everyone - I have to tell you one more amazing thing about my trees on 14th St. I was driving up 14th St. with Joe so that I could see my trees again. I was swooning every time a tree let a leaf fall to the ground in front of us. Joe got a kick out of my excitement. Then a tree released a leaf that came right in Joe's car window and landed on his lap. It was beautiful and very unusual. It was almost white, and the leaf stood up perpendicular to the stem. We took it home and put it in front of Joe's book work area for him to enjoy. I felt like it was a gift from the tree to Joe.
- Kathy


The leaf I have shown here is not Kathy and Joe's leaf- just one of my photos of American Sweetgum leaves that Kathy's descriptions brought to my mind, although the leaf is not perpendicular to the stem- perhaps if Kathy reads this she will tell me if it is at all similar? And thank you Kathy for a story that brightened my day- so many people just don't SEE trees...

The Fall in LA

All my life having been subjected to the miraculous, dramatic shocks of the changing seasons in the UK, I will always feel rather cheated in Southern California, where the changes are more subtle. Because of this, I get extra excited when finding evidence of Autumn- or I should say "the Fall"- in LA where the majority of trees are evergreens.

As I have said before, as an artist my prime interest in trees is visual. Although my knowledge of the indigenous British trees is quite extensive, it is very limited regarding trees from other countries, including those in the US. In the last few days I have twice been made very aware of this, and embarrassed myself.

The first instance: Nearby, there is a wonderful avenue of one of the few local trees that are now glowing red and yellow and orange. I vaguely decided they were some variety of Maples- partly because of their colours and partly because of the palmate shape of the leaves:









Before writing this post I looked more closely at them, and soon realized that there were no signs of the Acer family winged seed pods. Instead there were these spiky, round fruits that I think of as "pom-poms", similar to those on the London Plane trees, and the leaves were slightly different from all the Maples.


A bit of research led me to the American Sweetgum tree- Liqidambar styraciflua.

My second instance of mistaken identity was in a street connected to that of the Sweetgums, down which I regularly walk when taking my Granddaughter Violet to a nearby playground. There I was constantly enjoying some magnificent tall golden trees, especially when lit by sunlight. Again, I was not that concerned about what they were, as it was their colour rather than their structure that caught my attention. I thought they were possibly some sort of Sycamores (though not the London Plane tree).








Having decided to include them in this post I became a bit more observant: checking out the leaves on the ground, I recognized the distinctive shape of a tree I had fallen in love with in the Botanical Gardens of Bath. This was the Tulip tree, Liriodendron tulipifera, also known as the Yellow Poplar tree, although it is a member of the Magnolia family. What puzzled me at first was that on the LA trees I had never noticed the wondrous flowers they have, and which I had delighted in photographing on the Bath tree- but then I remembered that last Spring I left the country in March, before they would have blossomed.

These are the LA leaves:



And this is one of the Bath ones:


And here is the evidence I zoomed in on of the seed clusters on the LA tree:


Finally, two photos of the Tulip tree flowers in Bath. I just can't wait to see the LA trees covered with these magical flowers next year!