Trees on the Yale Nature Walk

The white fir is native to the mountainous regions of the Pacific coast to central Colorado, and from central Oregon and southeastern Idaho to northern Mexico. They can grow in a variety of environments, from high elevation with long, snowy winters to lower elevation with warmer weather and lower precipitation. It is a monoecious species, with densely grouped reddish male cones and larger brown female cones. It is a genetically adaptable and plastic species that has been known to hybridize with other firs. The white fir has two primary uses: in construction as timber, and as Christmas trees. As such, they are commercially grown and harvested. The biggest threat to the white fir are predatory animals. The fir engraver beetle, for example, can damage up to 2.4 million cubic meters of harvest stock per year. Rodents such as the pocket gopher and grazers such as deer can also stunt their growth, and in extreme cases, outright kill mature trees. Our specimen in New Haven serves an aesthetic rather than commercial purpose and seems to have thankfully remained safe from predators.

The Japanese falsecypress, also commonly known as the sawara falsecypress, is a medium to large-sized conifer. The tree is native to Japan but its planting potential has a widespread distribution across North America. The origin of its genus name "Chamaecyparis" is from the Greek words "chamai," meaning low growing, and "kyparissos," meaning cypress, which references its habitat and relationship to other genus members. Its species, "pisifera," means "bearing pea-like seeds," because of the small, rounded seeds and cones. The smaller rounded cones with fewer seeds are the characteristic that distinguishes the false cypress from the true cypress.

Decaisnea fargesii is commonly known as dead man's fingers or the blue bean tree. This shrub is native to western China and other western Asia countries such as Nepal, Bhutan, and northeastern parts of India, though its common names originate from Ireland. This shrub is often as wide as it is tall, and this particular measured to 7m in the winter of 2014. It commonly flowers in the summer while its fruit ripen in the fall around Halloween. This plant is distinctive for its blue sausage-shaped fruit, which give its various common names. Although the fruit is edible, the tree mostly serves an ornamental or decorative purpose when grown in non-native parts of the world.

This tree is considered a "living fossil", meaning it looks very similar to fossils that are millions of years old. Interestingly, it is the only surviving tree in the entire order of ginkgoales: the order, family, genus, and species are all used to describe a single type of tree. Perhaps more interestingly, ginkgo trees are older than the T. Rex.