We are having a beautiful spring here in New York City and I wanted to share a few photos. I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to go over Central Park in a helicopter recently. The Kwanzan cherries around the Reservoir were in full bloom. I am also including a couple of photos of Kalmia latifolia. For some reason we have trouble establishing this plant in the park, but this year they look fantastic. This is my first post to this forum. I hope you enjoy the photos. Regina Alvarez Director of Horticulture and Woodland Management Central Park Conservancy New York City
Kalmia latifolia is often hard to establish. Form shown a bit unusual for having only a little pinkness to the flowers.
Interesting to see the aerial photo. Tho' I fear the photos are probably too small for the Botany Photo of the Day feature, if I remember rightly they need to be over 200 or is it 250 kb. Spellcheck: Kanzan. The 'w' is an all-too-common nurserymans' error.
But 'Kanzan' is the original, and therefore correct, spelling of the cherry cultivar name in Roman script.
Thankyou for the great photo Regina. What a lovely park in the middle of the concrete jungle. I did not realise how large it was. I am very used to parks all over the place here in Melbourne Australia. I did not realise what a precious resource for time out this is for New Yorkers.. Liz
It really is a wonderful resource for us. It is a completely man-made park designed and constructed in the 1850s. 341 hectares (843 acres), it's not only important for all of us that live in the city, but it is an important habitat for migrating birds. We get close to 300 species of birds stopping in the park during migrating season. It is one of the best birding spots in the U.S.
Interesting to compare the aerial photo with Google Earth; the faint greenish-yellow band across the lake (lower left of photo) also appears on G.E. - what is it? And what are the things that look like sand pits in the middle of the photo? Easy to see that from a bird's eye view, it appears as a green oasis in a stony desert, so will be a strong magnet. The habitats that I can't see (on this view) are marshland (for e.g. Marsh Wren), wet mud (for shorebirds), and long grass with scattered low shrubs (for e.g. Grasshopper Sparrow).
"Kan can also be read as seki ("border") and zan can be read as yama ("mountain"). Thus the cherry 'Kanzan' is also called 'Sekiyama' or 'Sekizan'. 'Kwanzan' is an obsolete spelling of 'Kanzan'. Why the name 'Kanzan' was applied to the cherry still remains a question". --Kuitert, Japanese Flowering Cherries (1999, Timber Press, Portland
Michael - The water body you are referring to is the Reservoir. It once served to provide water to the residents of New York City. The faint band you see is a walkway between two pumping stations (you can see one of the stations at the top end of the band). The water can be lowered and workers can walk between the two buildings. What look like sand pits in the middle of the photo are one of our groups of ballfields, called the Great Lawn. We do have small marshy areas in the park, nothing very extensive and we occasionally get marsh wrens. We have one meadow that is several acres in size and other smaller areas with native grasses, but as far as I know we have never had a grasshopper sparrow. Few mud areas, we do get some shore birds passing through. http://www.nycbirdreport.com/sites/1/expyear.html This site has a list of the most commonly seen birds in the park, around 200 species. Our total list over the years is a little over 275 species.
