Tag: sequoia
A tree walk through history in Laurelhurst Park
By Andy Meeks
On Wednesday morning approximately 30 people were treated to a walking tour highlighting the trees and history of Laurelhurst Park.
Phyllis Reynolds, author of “Trees of Greater Portland” and longtime Friends of Trees supporter, led the tour as part of the Portland Parks & Recreation’s (PP&R) Arbor Week.
Reynolds has done extensive research and mapping work in the Southeast Portland park and said that there are nearly 1,000 trees in the park consisting of almost 115 species, about one-third of which are Douglas-firs. She gave a very thorough, descriptive and entertaining walk past ginkgos, grand firs, the Concert Grove lindens, black oaks, sycamore maples, giant sequoias, Kentucky coffeetrees, white oaks and dawn redwoods.
The group learned from Reynolds that Laurelhurst Park was once part of the 462-acre Hazel Fern Farm owned by William Sargent Ladd, a native of Vermont who twice served as Portland’s mayor in the 1850s. He used it as a dairy farm and also raised Clydesdale draft horses and cattle. Ladd died in 1893 and his heirs sold the surrounding land to a group of developers who created the Laurelhurst neighborhood in conjunction with Frederick Law Olmsted’s landscape architecture firm.
The seven wonders of the tree world
Courtesy of the Mother Nature Network, this slideshow series identifies the most important, significant, amazing … trees in the world.
Description from mnn.com:
This redwood tree is located in Sequoia National Park in California and is believed to be between 2,300 and 2,700 years old. It towers about 275 feet above the ground, is the largest non-clonal tree in the world by volume, and is more than 100 feet around at the base.
Description from mnn.com:
The Tule Tree, or El Árbol del Tule, is a Montezuma cypress tree on the grounds of a church in Santa María del Tule, in the Mexican state of Oaxaca. It measures more than 119 feet around but is only 116 feet high. It’s believed that the tree is about 2,000 years old.