Two More Neighborhood Trees

This week I walked down the street and found some fun trees that I hadn't seen in the area before.
The First tree was a Strawberry tree. The bright flowers and fruit caught my eye as I walked past. Also the bark was red and smooth. For the Keying part it was not a very difficult tree to key. The key to groups took me all the way to group 10; ( Evergreen trees with alternate, simple, pinnately veined and/or pinnately lobed leave). First couplet, no acorns, not an oak(1'). Second couplet asked about translucent dots. It almost looked like there was dots but I think it was just very small veins.(2') Leaves were >1/2", evenly sawtoothed, and hairless (4', 5', 8'). Couplet ten narrows it down to two species of arbutus or the strawberry tree. From the description it seemed like Arbutus Unedo. But it could have also been the hybrid plant Arbutus 'Marina' which is a commonly cultivated tree in california.

The second tree was a palm that was on the edge of this palm tree farm down the road. Most of the palms were in crates but this one was in the ground. I uses the palm tree key on pg. 121. and figured out that it was a canary island palm (phoenix canariensis)

Posted on May 16, 2020 10:36 PM by chadschuler23