I'm into cherries with flowers this colour right now, so when I saw all these green petals on the ground, I got excited. But these are not cherries. The trees are huge, with the crown starting about the height of the nearby houses on Pendrell St in Vancouver's West End. I've lived here for years but I just noticed these trees, and there are several of them. They may be common street trees in this area for all I know. I'd like to know what they are. You'd think searching on "green flowers" would bring up the answer right away, but not so. It looks to me like the "petals" are really flowers. Now I can't remember if they had red spots on only one side or if some had red spots and some didn't.
Ulmus.Common name Elm.What you have shown in your pictures are the seeds, not flowers! Sadly in the U.K. virtually all our Elms have died due to Dutch Elm disease.
Yep, elm seeds. The red spot is the seed itself, surrounded by a papery wing which assists with wind dispersal. Tough call on identification given the way elms hybridise freely; it looks fairly similar to Wych Elm Ulmus glabra, but the crown shape isn't quite right for that. The seeds are fairly easy to germinate, provided you sow them immediately while they are still fresh and slightly moist, before they dry out.
Luddite sadly we also have many sick trees including the famous Elms in Melbourne. Old age, drought and the "Elm leaf beetle " are causing trees to become ill. Many were planted as memorial avenues after the wars and there is hardly a country town in this state that does not have a stand of them. The young arborist who lives over the road was swinging way up in his huge elm tree doing renovation work about 12 months ago. This year it is looking so much happier after a gentle prune and innoculation against the beetle. This tree would be about 50 feet it certainly rivals some of the eucalypts for height. http://www.metrotrees.com.au/projects/mcc_elm_renew.html http://www.melbourne.vic.gov.au/info.cfm?top=26&pg=600 http://www.theage.com.au/news/natio...-green-heritage/2006/11/09/1162661832115.html Liz
Re: Elms - Huge tree, green disc-shaped flowers Thanks for all that. You never know what you're going to learn here. Now that I know the name, I found a Summer 2007 article from the Royal Alberta Museum (page 2) which says they have 40,000 elms in Edmonton. It also mentions that the seeds are samaras, my favourite new word last year, but I apparently hadn't got the hang of what all it could mean yet. And fun to see the Melbourne links. I'm signed up for David Tarrant's botanical garden tour of Australia in the fall, and we'll be going to Melbourne.
Winnipeg has the largest American elm population in North America, thanks to a long-standing program of battling Dutch elm disease.
