Identification: Strongly ascending branches, leaves same colour top and bottom

These two trees have me confused. I feel like I'm going back to square one, but everything I look up is supposed to have stomata on the underside of the leaves and these do not. I'm not even going to say what I've looked up. These are in schoolyard landscaping. Thanks.

 

Maybe Taxus baccata Dovestonia ?

 

Thanks, chimera. So a yew. I did think that first of all, and I guess the leaf undersides are lighter than the tops, though I still don't think I'm seeing the "two broad pale green stomatal bands on the leaf undersides" (from the Vancouver Trees app now available on iTunes).

There is not much that I can find on T. baccata 'Dovestonia' (or, I see on the Royal Horticultural Society page Taxus baccata 'Dovastonii Aurea', Dovaston's yew, which led me to think that the spelling would be Dovastonii, which query then gives me Taxus baccata 'Dovastoniana', also on one of the RHS pages). I don't know who the World Botanical Associates are, but they have a lot to say about the Dovastoniana cultivar: http://www.worldbotanical.com/Taxus_baccata_var%20dovastoniana.htm.

What I'm not finding is how I would distinguish the cultivar from just the species, or for that matter, from Taxus cuspidata, the Japanese yew or from Taxus x media, the hybrid between the two. I can usually recognize yews, but there was something about these trees that looked different to me.

I've attached a few more photos.

 

In the color photo at your link above the foliage looks similar. WBA site says who they are, and he goes on about yews in general in great detail - including how to tell them apart, although he seems to be quite a splitter the exhaustive review he provides is noteworthy.

 

Thanks, Ron. Where it says "... having the same leaf arrangement as in the type (leaves spreading partly along two sides in one plane except for the uppermost leaves that point upwards)", is "the type" the species, so the species would do that as well?

Maybe it's this feature that's what looks unusual to me, if those words mean that it looks like a Norway spruce.

 

Yes, there is quite a lot of detail, now that I look at the main page. In the Introduction to Taxus is "T. cuspidata ... is generally recognized by long recurved branches with stiffly ascending linear leaves that spread nearly in two ranks." So that's out.

 

The stereotypical Norway spruce habit you are talking about here is typical of English yew but the species varies as does Norway spruce - both have yielded numbers of cultivars. Arthur Lee Jacobson (1996, Timber Press) says 'Dovastoniana' was common on the market "here" until the early 1980s. So it seems there is a fairly high probability of encountering it in older plantings - although not a single Seattle location is given for the cultivar in his 2006 book. Why this particular one fell out of favor I do not know, although I can guess it did not lend itself to the modern demand for plants that fit into small spaces, its long branches being a source of alarm even in nursery sizes.

 

Wendy, yes the correct cultivar name I was thinking of is 'Dovastoniana'.
There was, and may still be, a labelled one near the walkway on the south side of the Floral Hall at Vandusen.
There may be a 'Dovastonii Aurea' near it, if memory serves me right.

 

Chimera, I'll have to have a look. For the record, the cultivar name has no "e", Dovastoniana.

Ron, thanks for mentioning that it really has appeared locally. Maybe it loses its appeal once it's pruned.

 

Thanks Wendy, maybe I'll get it right eventually :)
Will try to put up photos later.

 

The yellow version isn't mentioned by Jacobson (1996), which means he never saw any North American wholesale listings.

 

'Dovastoniana' is a male tree, that reportedly occasionally sends out female branches (G. Krussmann - Manual of Cultivated Conifers).

 

Jacobson (1996) appears to say that the original seedling was a male with one female branch but that a female version is what dominated subsequent plantings ("Usually the female is grown"). So apparently either at least one other clone appeared elsewhere and came to dominate production or somebody made a point of propagating from that one female branch early in the game! When a cultivar dates back to the 18th century there is plenty of time for more than one introduction to have been put on the market using the same name.