Now that our four o'clock club has moved on to gossiping about flowers, we'd like to identify this Stanley Park tree outside the north side of the Pitch & Putt, just above the bike path. It's a nice tall tree, with the branches and flowers way above eye level, with the flowers standing upright above the leaves, arranged in nice rows along the branches. I can't quite figure out the leaf arrangement, but I think they're simple leaves alternately arranged, entire leaf edges. The flowers seem to be arranged in cymose corymbs, but figuring that out hasn't helped me come up with an ID. In the winter, I'd have guessed from the bare branches that it was a magnolia. The stringy petal things (that are all over the ground and all the plants below it) look like Ash or Fringetree, but the leaves are not compound like Ash and the flowers stand up, not droop like the Chionanthus retusus photos I've seen. I've looked in The Natural History of Stanley Park at every tree that's indicated as being in that area, but I can't come up with it, though surely it was there when the book was issued in 1988.
Cornus controversa then, Giant Dogwood. I never even looked at the dogwoods, thinking I knew what they looked like. C. controversa is listed as being in the area, and here's a Wikimedia picture. I'm attaching a heavily cropped version of my photo. Thanks, Daniel.
A good way to test for Cornus if you are in any doubt is to try the leaf test. See.... http://perigordvacance.typepad.com/...ncategorized/2007/09/09/grass_snake_045_2.jpg http://www.landscapejuice.com/2007/09/how-to-identify.html
Parts too large for Cornus alternifolia, definitely C. controversa. I think this specimen is mentioned in Dr. Straley's Vancouver tree book, but I do not have a copy here.
Yes, Straley (Trees of Vancouver, UBC Press, 1992) says it's on the eastern end of the Pitch & Putt, whereas this is across the path from the course, but it sounds the same. He mentions the "very beautiful tiered or layered branching pattern, with flat-topped, creamy white flowers borne in profusion along the tops of the branches in May. The individual flowers are only a few millimetres across..." Straley also confirms that it's been "limbed-up quite high and is difficult to see clearly". Silver surfer, I don't know about being able to do that leaf trick unless we find some leaves on the ground. It's nifty to know, though.
Thanks for that neat bit of info Silver Surfer. That will come in real handy at the MG plant clinic. Barb
I just checked this trick with our single Utah species, Cornus sericea and, indeed, it shows some latex threads in the tear.
I was so excited as I was driving along Cambie to recognize these young trees along the east side of the street south of 59th as being Cornus controversa. The label has the latin name and June Snow Dogwood. Another tag has the Parks Board code COCO and 2008. They're interplanted with other trees that I recognized as being Cornus (whose label I neglected to look at), but the shapes of the two kinds of young tree were similar, so I had an extra clue. I never even thought to try the leaf trick.
Cultivar is 'June Snow-JFS': http://www.jfschmidt.com/introductions/junesnow/index.html Those will not fit in that space, unless carefully pruned and trained to branch very high - something there is no sign of so far (look how close the one branch tip is to the road in the left shot). "Does not respond to hard pruning" --Brickell/Joyce, The American Horticultural Society Pruning & Training (1996, DK Publishing, New York)
Oh, June Snow is the cultivar name, not a common name for the type of dogwood. Normally, the Parks board would have made their code COCOJS to indicate the cultivar. Is it this 'June Snow-JFS' cultivar that doesn't respond well to pruning? The Stanley Park tree is limbed quite high and looks fine, but I read somewhere that it was part of the park plan to do have three levels of planting, with the top story limbed to make room for the lower-height trees and shrubs. We don't know if there's any kind of plan for the street trees.
No, the book was talking about the species Cornus controversa. Inability to respond attractively to cutting back of branches is usual for tree-type dogwoods in general. The one in Stanley Park may have some nice, lingering wounds on the trunk if large limbs were removed after it was well along in size and age. And cutting whole limbs off is not the same as heading back branches, leaving the rest in place.
I ran into the Stanley Park Cornus controversa in bloom the other day. My phone camera can't do shots like the ones I posted originally, but I like these better.
