Trees

Nov
27
Persimmon Trees Foresee Our Winter’s Future

Persimmon Trees Foresee Our Winter’s Future

What will winter bring? You could look to official forecasts, or you can ask the trees.
3 min read
Dec
15
A squirrel nibbles a tidbit, perched on a bare winter branch.

Squirrels Are Inadvertent Arborists

Eastern gray squirrels have a whole constellation of hidden sustenance that they will recover by scent or memory.
3 min read
Nov
26
Bundled Christmas trees are piled in stacks on a city street. A man in a suit navigates the green labyrinth on a cell phone.

Escape the City in Corridors of Fir and Pine

Like the Great Birnam Wood moving to Dunsinane Hill foretelling the downfall of Macbeth, a forest is invading New York City.
3 min read
Nov
17
A dragon kite tangled in the bare branches of a sweetgum tree.

Garlands of Aerial Flotsam

The now-naked forms of trees are revealing summer’s detritus in their twiggy grasp.
3 min read
Nov
10
Fallen leaves this week in Prospect Park, Brooklyn

A Tapestry of Trees at Your Feet

Midway through fall, there is a collage of local biodiversity in every park and neighborhood.
2 min read
Nov
03
Tennis ball-sized spheres with a broccoli-like texture litter the lawn around three large trees in Prospect Park.

The Hazardous Fall of the Osage Oranges

Softball-sized and abundant, they can bruise a head as they tumble.
3 min read
Oct
26
The greenish-gold fan of a fallen ginkgo leaf is surrounded on asphalt by three very smushed ginkgo berries.

Golden Carpet of Rancid Butter

The putrescence you hopscotch around is the smell of butyric acid, the smell of nausea.
3 min read
Oct
14
A majestic maple dominates a grassy plain. A sliver of red, fall foliage tints one edge of its spreading canopy.

City Shadows Fragment the Fall Foliage

Notice how the trees shift from sun to shadow as the earth turns.
3 min read
Jun
23
A hand holds a plucked ripe mulberry (a blackberry-esque fruit) in front of a leafy mulberry tree.

The Urban Mulberry Harvest

A great urban harvest is underway for the birds, and those humans who join in the feast.
2 min read
Jun
02
A hand holds up an ornate, tulip-like flower, still attached to a broad leaf. A tuliptree towers in the background.

The Flowering of New York’s Great Old Ones

Tuliptrees are the city’s living elders, growing taller than the other trees, surviving for centuries as other beings live and die in generations around them.
3 min read