Trees on the Yale Nature Walk

Betula lenta, known by the common names of black birch, sweet birch, or cherry birch, is a native birch species present throughout much of eastern North America. It is valued for its wood, which when exposed to air darkens to resemble mahogany, as well as being a source of wintergreen oil. It has a dark brown to greyish black color. Unlike most other birches, mature Betula lenta can develop hard, scaly plates. Removed from its industrial history, it is now primarily found in forests and used as an ornamental tree in landscaping. Some visual cues for spotting the black birch include: dark brown bark; green cones in the spring and brown cones in the late summer; dark, shiny, serrated green leaves in the summer and bright golden yellow leaves in the fall.

Named after the Edinburgh nurseryman Charles Lawson, the Chamaecyparis lawsoniana (Port Orford-Cedar) is large evergreen tree native to Oregon and northwest California. This evergreen can grow up to 200ft tall, with a trunk width anywhere between 4-7ft, and leaves between 3-5mm long. Along with its impressive size, the Port Orford Cedar can live for hundreds of years. The wood of the tree is considered to be one of the most valuable harvested in North America because of its durability, beauty, and scarcity. For generations, native people such as the Hoopa Valley Tribe has used the Cedar as a valuable resource to build ceremonial structures, referring to the tree as "the Healer."

The apricot tree is a small tree with a dense, spreading canopy. Also known as the ansu apricot, Siberian apricot, or Tibetan apricot, its origin is not exact due to its extensive prehistoric history of cultivation, but it is almost certainly somewhere in Asia and commonly thought to be Armenia. In modern times, it is most heavily cultivated in the Middle East, Western Asia, Northeastern America, and Eastern China. Apricot trees are perennials, meaning that they can live for very long periods of time; apricots usually live between 40 and 150 years. The apricot is native to a continental climate with cold winters, but is somewhat versatile and can grow in more Medeterranian environments as long as they have a suffient dormant period. The apricot is quite cold-hardy, more so than most other drupes including the peach, and can withstand temperatures as cold as −30 °C.

The Bald Cypress (Taxodium distichum), also known as the southern cypress, is a deciduous conifer in the family Cupressaceae that grows on saturated and seasonally inundated soils in the lowlands of the Southeastern and Gulf Coastal Plains of the United States. Because of its high presence in the south, it is the official state tree of Louisiana. The bald cypress is a large slow-growing and long-lived tree typically reaching heights of 30–35 m (100–120 ft) and a trunk diameter of 1–2 m (3–6 ft). The bark is gray-brown to red-brown, thin and fibrous with a stringy texture, having a vertically interwoven pattern of shallow ridges and narrow furrows. The leaves are alternate and linear, with flat blades borne on the twig that are spirally arranged on the stem, but twisted at the base to lie in two horizontal ranks, 1–2 cm long and 1–2 mm broad. The main trunks are surrounded by cypress knees, which come up from the surface at a distance from the trunk. Baldy cypress is monoecious. This species is a popular ornamental tree, grown for its light, feathery foliage and orange-brown to dull red fall color.