Submitted by Nina Shoroplova

Twenty seven of us gathered in Alexandra Park, Vancouver, on the morning of Saturday, March 22, to learn about the 160-plus trees that have been planted (including a few that are native) along English Bay Beach Park and Sunset Beach Park. 

We admired the Heritage Red Oak,[i] perhaps planted on the first day of the new century, January 1, 1901.[ii] (Caroline took the photo at the end of the walk, which is why no one is there!) Under one of the branches in the photo is the Haywood Bandstand, a 1988 restoration of the original 1914 Queen Anne heritage structure. Just out of sight is a memorial to Seraphim Joe Fortes, swimming instructor in English Bay for decades: “Official Lifeguard and Keeper of the Beach”. 

Six elms that grow together as one—and are called “English Elm” in the same Vancouver Heritage Register—are lit up every year from December 1 into the new year. Five are field elms (Ulmus minor) and one of them is an English elm, Ulmus minor subsp. vulgaris. A friend calls these the trees-with-a-thousand-lights.

Because of the prevailing westerly winds blowing from the Strait of Georgia across Burrard Inlet and into this English Bay location, almost all the trees planted in these parks are wind pollinated: oak, elm, ash, beech, birch, maple, London plane, poplar, Persian ironwood, and four species of evergreens. The few cherry blossom trees are self-pollinating, while the honeylocust trees are the only ones attracting various insects to their nectar to pollinate the rather-green racemose clusters of flowers that look like catkins. From each inconspicuous honeylocust flower eventually comes a 30 cm to 45 cm long brown bean pod containing seeds beloved by the birds and squirrels inhabiting this part of the beach. By the time of our walk, all the pods had holes where the seeds used to be!

But back to the many wind-pollinated trees.

One person in our group wanted to see a London planetree, so we stopped in a group of bigleaf maples, Acer macrophyllum, one of only two native tree species along this beach. Everyone had to figure out which was the single London planetree in the group. Remember, these trees were leafless, so we had to go by their bark, roots, branching, and so on. 

These two connecting beaches are somewhat dominated by Lombardy poplars, Populus nigra ‘Italica’, a cultivar of black poplar. These are tall slim trees that were boasting red male flowers in abundance.

Populus nigra is a dioecious (di means “two”; oecium means “house”) species, meaning it has two houses for the production of fruit, a male tree for pollen and a female tree for ovules to be fertilized into fruit. However, according to Oregon State University, Lombardy poplar is a “male clone, flowers (male) in reddish catkins; does not produce fruit or downy seeds.”[iii]

Almost all coniferous evergreens, on the other hand, are monoecious, which means they sport pollen cones and seed cones on the same trees, fairly near each other. A Lawson falsecypress, Chamaecyparis lawsoniana, native to the US, was showing off its pollen cones and last year’s seed cones in great colour.

Last year’s seed cones are brown and larger than this year’s pollen cones, which are red and black, and smaller.

Two giant sequoias, Sequoiadendron giganteum, are growing up in these parks, both still juvenile; in the wild, they can grow for thousands of years. Here, a Nature Vancouver member is listening carefully to what this sequoia has to say, but I think he will be out of luck, because, as Diana Beresford-Kroeger says, trees use infrasound to communicate. That’s a sound range that is below human’s ability to hear.

As I write this blog post, hundreds of people at the Vancouver Cherry Blossom Festival are enjoying a hundred Akebono cherry blossom trees in bud and bloom in David Lam Park. I’ll be walking there soon. The rootstock of an ornamental cherry tree is always easy to recognize, because of its horizonal lenticels, that is its places for breathing on its trunk. They look like short rough lines against a smooth light grey background. And this is what the Akebono blossom buds looked like at English Bay on March 22. 

My favourite tree on this beach is the narrowleaf ash, Fraxinus angustifolia. Someone asked why it is my favourite. I said because of its shape, its winter skeleton, its barely noticeable January flowers (unless you’re searching for them), and its beauty. What do you think?

And finally, we looked at a row of sycamore maples, Acer pseudoplatanus, growing tall as a windbreak and buffering sound on the parkside of Beach Avenue.

We were so lucky with the weather on March 22 – a cloudy day in a rainy month. Thanks for joining us, everyone. 

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Notes:

^[i] https://guidelines.vancouver.ca/policy-vancouver-heritage-register.pdf

^[ii] https://thelasource.com/columns/archives/street-photography-by-denis-bouvier/2014/09/22/alexandra-park/

^[iii] https://landscapeplants.oregonstate.edu/plants/populus-nigra-italica