Trip Report by Nina Shoroplova. Photos by Nina Shoroplova and Caroline Penn.

Twenty-five of us went on a tree-identification walk in Queen Elizabeth Park on August 30, 2025. We started at the southeast corner—actually an off-leash dog park—and went first toward the Vancouver Lawn Bowling Club and then around the tennis, pickleball and basketball courts and sports field. It’s an area that’s full of both native and ornamental trees.

We gathered around an English oak, Quercus robur, and learned to differentiate it from our native oak, Quercus garryana, Garry oak, by the length of the tree’s peduncles, the stems between the acorns (initially the female flowers) and the twigs they are on. Garry oak acorns have no peduncles: they grow directly out of their twigs. That’s a very easy way to differentiate between the two species.

Some participants wondered why there are so many non-native trees in our parks. And in the same vein, why we North Americans call Douglas-firs firs and western redcedars cedars when 

1. western redcedars are actually in the Thuja genus, sometimes commonly called the arborvitae genus, rather than being in the Cedrus genus, the true cedar genus; 
2. Douglas-firs are in the Pseudotsuga genus rather than being in the Abies genus, the true fir genus.

Probably all those years ago when our forebears moved from Europe and places east to North America in the west, the familiar shape or habit of a large tree was what made them feel comfortable in their new homeland. Those of us who have moved to Canada from another country, another continent, understand wanting to recognize something familiar, wanting to feel at home in the new land.

We went over to see a tree growing below the Vancouver Lawn Bowling Club: golden raintree, Koelreuteria paniculata. The large, light seed lanterns, each holding four small round black seeds, had turned from pink at the beginning of August (the photo of the whole tree) to ochre (the close-up photo) at the end of the month.

Along the way, we passed a tree bearing some fruit similiar to apples. Someone took a photo and looked it up and said it was a quince, Cydonia oblonga, in the rose family. That made sense. Quince fruit are quite hard until they are peeled, quartered, and simmered, when they turn a blush pink and taste good.

We climbed down a bank, past a larch with soft linear needles in clusters, a giant sequoia with stiff awl-shaped needles, and a honeylocust. We walked past several maples, including a Norway maple, which is considered a bully because it seeds so prolifically, outcompeting native trees. Its large coathanger-shaped winged seeds (double samaras) littered the ground below the tree.

Around a corner in a group with a Colorado spruce, Picea pungens, were three five-needled pines. Two of the pines seemed similar, perhaps Korean pine, Pinus koraiensis, and the third was the native western white pine, Pinus monticola, though it’s not native on our coast, just in our mountains and along the coastline further south. Someone spotted a large wasp nest in the branches of another tree. What architecture!

Returning to where we started through a plane of black cottonwoods (also known as black poplar), Populus trichocarpa, and white poplar, Populus alba, whose leaf we could see was round with lobes rather than a long heart shape, we reached an area of evergreens, including eastern white-cedar, Thuja occidentalis, also known commonly as eastern arborvitae or American arborvitae. Everything was happening on that tree, this year’s and last year’s pollen cones and this year’s and last year’s seed cones. And the foliage looked so fresh.

A Chinese wingnut tree had us remembering anything we knew about winding a wingnut screw around a threaded rod. Some of the chains of edible nuts were long. Edible nuts but very small.

Nearing the end of our walk we learned that the majority of coniferous trees have separate male and female reproductive organs on the same tree: male cones and female cones. We call that habit monoecious, meaning one house. But then we saw a dioecioius species, a monkey puzzle tree, Araucaria araucana. The female was taking a rest and had no seed cones, but the male tree was producing pollen cones each year.

And finally we looked at a cultivar (a cultivated variety) of weeping white mulberry, Morus alba ‘Chaparral’, a mound of differently shaped mulberry leaves and strongly descending branches. The other common name for the species is silkworm mulberry, which gave credence to the leaves’ popularity among moths.

Great walking, talking, and discussing trees with everyone.
Nina Shoroplova and Caroline Penn