chris_earle's Favorites

Japanese name: カヤ, 榧, kaya.
"Nishidaira's big Kaya 西平の榧", a monumental tree more than 1000 years old, in the vicinity of the Hagihiyoshi Shrine 萩日吉神社. Designated as Natural Monument of Saitama Prefecture. Now it stands surrounded by a Sugi plantation.

Needles flatish and will not roll between fingers. Not aromatic when crushed. Nearby a P. engelmannii had needles that rolled and were aromatic were sharper One photo has two cones. The lower cone is P. sitchensis, the upper one is P. engelmannii. We found both trees 100 feet apart and it was great to see the differences.

Trees described by Debreczy & Racz as Abies neodurangesis. Photos 7, 8, 9 show comparison of foliage with typical Abies durangensis from south of El Salto, Durango, on road to Pueblo Nuevo.. (longer foliage is neodurangensis) Both taken from lower shade branches of tree. According to Debreczy & Racz, it differs from A. durangensis in having long, outspreading, shiny dark green needles on shade branches, vs. shorter, pruinose-green to pruinose-grey in durangensis, forward directed on upper/fertile branches, and umbilicate cones, vs. down curved needles and cones with round or depressed tips in A. durangensis.

This is the Texas State Champion Ponderosa Pine in Tobe Canyon on TNC's Davis Mountains Preserve. The first shot of the entire tree is stitched together (in Photoshop) from two successive images; it's always hard to photograph a big tree! In the 2nd image, that's @johnkarges holding his 42" snake stick for a measure of the tree's dbh. Note the certificate from the Texas Big Tree Registry in the last image, displayed on the wall of the McIvor Conservation Center on the Preserve. It gives the measures as follows: height, 110 ft; circumference, 135 in [diameter = 43 in]; crown spread, 47 ft.

Small and inconspicuous trees here, none taller than two meters, could be a relict population from wetter, warmer times (hard to imagine it though, it's already hot and wet as hell)? No idea why they are not larger, but they were a small understory component of this forest.

One single plant, 1 meter high, at the edge of a forest. I assume the individual of Falcatifolium taxoides it was using as a host was the large one about 1.5 meters away, which was also the largest Falcatifolium I've seen yet (about 8" diameter trunk). Most have been scrawny. 600 m elevation.

One single 4 foot tall plant at this location, remarkably accessible. Surprised to find it here, presumably an unrecorded locale for it (did not see this location on herbarium accessions at Noumea herbarium).

Up into the mid-subalpine zone here, this is a theme in my Tasmanian phytogeography - flowering plants that have leaf morphologies typically associated with conifers. The iNat software is quite sure this is a Cedrus.