Salem Trees I

I said in a previous essay that since my children have finally left home, I feel have "paid my debt" to nature and that life, from now on, becomes a symphony of fun, learning and service to others. Today I decided to begin the fun by taking a walking tour of my home town (Salem, OR) with special emphasis on heritage or distinctive trees in town. The State of Oregon, as well as the City of Salem, have heritage tree programs; why not take the time to appreciate what someone has spent a lot of time putting together for our appreciation? After all, it is free, you learn a lot and, as I discovered, you learn a lot of things from the people you run into as you study trees. If you can just get over the fear of being perceived as awkward by passers-by because you are standing and looking or feeling a tree, rather than "being productive" in some activity that others say is a productive one, then you too might some day learn the joy of this type of discovery.

Getting Started

I spent last evening putting together lists of about two dozen trees I might want to "visit" today. Then, I combined this list with the Willamette University list of trees (reviewed here), and I knew I had several hours of good walking planned for today. I began with a deodar cedar, a massive multi-branched tree in a neighbor's yard. While this web site says that these cedars (Cedrus deodara) reach 70' in height, the owner (whose name happened to be Pine) said that her tree topped out at more than 100'. Here is a picture of the network of huge branching limbs. Have you ever seen anything like it?

One of the unexpected joys of "treeing" is that you learn far more than you even plan to learn. While the owner and I were talking she pointed to her daughter digging up some weeds. She called them something that sounded like "cumfrey." Perhaps because I hadn't been working in the garden in years the term wasn't familiar. When I got home I eagerly looked it up and discovered that it appeared in the Unabridged as cumfrey or comfrey. Thus, it can't be used in the Kids National Spelling Bee. But, to my surprise, it only appears as comfrey in the Collegiate dictionary (the one used for my bee). Thus, I eagerly learned it. Here is a picture of this quick-growing wild flower. Its Linnaean name is Symphytum officinale. Here is a page on all the soaps, herbal recipes and other things you can buy that are made from this wild flower.

Well, before I left her, she also mentioned that she loved her "Jupiter's beard." I looked quickly and concluded that since she had no facial hair it must have been a nearby flower she was referring to. Indeed it was. She had several of these flowers, also known as Keys to Heaven or Red Valerian, surrounding the deodar cedar. I finally pulled away from our conversation, but I was newly humbled. Here I was hoping to find something about deodar cedars, and I ended up learning also about two other wildflowers. And, wouldn't you know it? Later on in the day, I discovered that the huge green cones (pictured here) that I had seen just yesterday in a tree I couldn't identify happened to be the cone of the deodar cedar. All of this--just because I decided to ask some friendly questions.

Moving Along

I kept on walking in the neighborhood not far from my home. The next tree was a towering American elm, Ulmus americana, planted in 1890 and now measuring 107 feet. One such elm would provide ample shade for a large front yard; this distinguished home had three of them. I was happy to see such a strong elm after the Dutch Elm disease of the 1970s-1990s had wiped out millions of them across the country. Did you know that it was called Dutch Elm disease because the seven or so scientists (all women, by the way) who discovered it in the early 1920s were from the Netherlands?

On the way to the next heritage tree, I ran came across a stand of three sturdy and very tall (about 80') Port Orford Cedars. We in CA, where I spent my teen years, called them "Lawson's Cypress," but Oregonians who want to emphasize native pride call it the former. Actually, the tree was named in Port Orford OR in the 1850s by men working for the Lawson nurseries in Scotland. So, take your pick. As a friend of mine says, "it is 6 1/2 of one, a dozen of another." I struck up a conversation with the owner of the trees, a man about my age who was washing his car. When I mentioned my past experience with this tree (I called it a "Port Orford Cedar" to him, because I guessed--correctly it turns out---that he was a native Oregonian), he brightened up and told me laughingly that when they were planted about 60 years ago, the man planting them erroneously thought they were arborvitae, and thus he planted six of them very close together. Arborvitae are a sort of hedge which grow maybe fifteen or twenty feet high. What resulted, however, were these towering beauties. The man had to "thin out" the trees, leaving the three that now exist today.

Conclusion

As you see, the fun continues when you meet and talk to people. So I pressed on and found a Douglas-fir (state tree of Oregon) in a place that I pass by at least once a day but had never stopped to look at the tree. It was an impressive Doug-fir, as we call them, now more than 100' high. It stands right next to a bird-supply store on Commercial St. SE, and the owner of that store was putting out displays when I went by. So I struck up a conversation with him. Quickly thinking on my feet, I asked him which birds might nest in the Douglas Fir. He rattled off quite a number, beginning with tanagers, and so, of course I had to look up "tanagers." I also asked him about "bird tours" of Salem, and he helped me out there. Finally, he identified a cedar in his yard as an "incense cedar." I was struggling for a proper identification.

The things learned from just the first hour of my day would have justified an entire day learning about local trees. People, when rightly questioned, want to tell you all that they know. I was simply the grateful recipient of all their wisdom, experience and specialized knowledge. But then, as I found out, the real fun began. My next essay describes that.

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