Have I mentioned that I scored a spot in the coveted Trees New York Citizen Pruners class? (All slots in this season's four concurrent sessions were snapped up within fifteen minutes.) The third of three zoom sessions is tonight, to be capped with an in-person pruning experience on Thursday, and I can feel my relationship with street trees changing.
For one, I've finally had to learn some tree identification. Our final exam will ask us to identify five from the city's sixteen most common street trees. It really does make a difference to know and recognize them! Then add things we've learned about how street trees are selected and cared for (nothing's left to chance) and appreciate the diversity of trees and tree combinations on each street.
So I've been walking the streets with interactive NY Tree Map (which I've known about for years) on my phone and I'm getting better and better - though I still waver between pinnately compound leaves of thornless honeylocust (a grafted cultivar) and Japanese pagoda tree, the finely toothed and uneven leaves of elm and linden.
The map offers details about 875,480 street trees and has recently been supplemented with details of trees in many parks. Each tree is recorded with species, girth, location and forester's visits and tree-care activities. (The site also gives speciously precise values for each tree's "Ecological benefits": stormwater intercepted, energy conserved, air pollutants removed. The willow oak outside school, for instance, apparently saves $321.42 each year. A little silly, but I guess I appreciate the idea.)
The tree map is the impressive work of citizen volunteers but could use some work. After many a delighted discovery, including happening on newly planted trees not yet registered, I was caught short by glitches on streets I walk every day. (The south side of West 12th between Seventh and Sixth, for instance, ends with two littleleaf lindens and two ginkgos, but the map has flipped them.)
