Dawn Redwood

Dawn Redwood (Metasequoia glyptostroboides)  Family: CUPRESSACEAE

The two Dawn Redwood trees on the Florida State campus are near the Starbucks and the new health center. They are easily mis-identified as bald cypress. Dawn redwood shares the deciduous habit and buttressed roots that bald cypress but it is more closely related to the redwoods (genus Sequoia). The genus Metasequoia was first described as a fossil from the Mesozoic Era (more than 68 million years ago) by Shigeru Miki in 1941, but soon after this a living representative, this species Metasequoia glyptostroboides, was found and described from a few small forests in China just after the second world war. Since then the plant has been planted worldwide and is not an uncommon ornamental tree. A large forest has been established and seedling grow wild in North Carolina but the tree has not established a wild population in Florida yet.

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Dawn Redwood leaves.

Dawn Redwood foliage

Dawn Redwood trees near the new health and wellness center on FSU campus.

Bark and fruit of Dawn Redwood

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Bald cypress

Taxodium distichum is bald cypress, and is in the cypress family (Cupressaceae)

This is planted around the FSU campus in a few places, especially in low lying areas near drains and ditches. A few nice examples occur just to the west of the tennis courts. It is normally associated with swamps in SE coastal plain region of North America - Delaware to Texas. It occurs statewide in Florida but not in the southern most counties. Good examples occur at Wakulla Springs.

Deciduous bald cypress growing in Wakulla Springs

The buttressed roots of bald cypress.

Fruit of bald cypress

Description: Grows tall and straight to about 40 m in height with some trees having large buttresses. Deciduous. Leaves: Green 8-20 mm long - feather like in appearance. Fruit: globose cones.

Similar to: Pond cypress (Taxodium ascendens) is similar but the pond cypress in form but the leaves are short 3-6 mm (needle like in appearance) and appressed to the supporting branchlets.

Pond cypress leaves and fruit.

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Map of bald cypress on the FSU campus - click for more information.

Introduced palms on campus

The Palm family has the taxonomic name Arecaceae but was previously given the more intuitive Palmae unfortunately through the vagaries of botanical nomenclature this Latin name is considered old fashioned now.

The most common palm on campus is the native species and state tree Sabal palmetto which outnumbers all the other palms on campus 2 to 1. The non-native species we have are the Pindo Palm (Butia capitata), the Date Palm (Phoenix dactylifera), the Canary Island Date Palm (Phoenix canariensis), and the Mexican Fan Palm (Washingtonia robusta).

Mexican Fan Palms are typical of Venice Beach in LA - just think Hollywood. Date palms are typical of oases in the middle east, and Canary Island Date Palms are just a fairly common ornamental. Scroll to the bottom to see the map of these palms on campus.

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Pindo Palm (Butia capitata)

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Mexican Fan Palm (Washingtonia robusta)

Some famous Mexican Fan Palms in LA's Venice Beach.

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Canary Island Date Palm (Phoenix canariensis)

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Date Palm (Phoenix dactylifera)

Non-native Palms on the Florida State University Campus

American Sweetgum

Family: Altingiaceae

Liquidambar styraciflua Sweetgum, Alligator wood

This trees is native to warm temperate areas of eastern North America and tropical montane regions of Mexico and Central America. Despite the similarity of its leaves to maple or oak it is in a completely different family. It always seems like this would have been a better common name for maple. The distinctive spiny fruit are shared across the genus, and Asian species in the same genus are used medicinally. The wood has been put to various uses, including imitation mahogany. It is a common ornamental, probably because of its fall colors. Those colors are much more vibrant the farther north you go.

In Florida sweetgum is found from Tampa northward and occurs in both lowland and upland woods.

Form: A large tree up to 40 m in height. Leaves: Alternate, simple 10-18 cm (sometimes more than 20 cm), star shaped with long petioles, serrated margins. The alternate leaves makes it easy to distinguish from maples. Flowers: March-May,when leaves are half grown greenish. Male and female flowers are born on the same tree. Male flowers are in terminal racemes two to three inches long, covered with rusty hairs; the female flowers are born on a slender peduncle borne in the axil some leaves. Fruit:Hard spiny balls 2.5-4cm in diameter hanging on long stalks are made up of fused ovaries, making it a compound fruit with 40-60 seed capsules. These fruit are persistent and quite distinctive for the species. Bark: Grayish, fissured and interlacing. The plated bark on small twigs gives it another common name: Alligator wood.





Leaves and fruit of sweetgum. Sweetgum bark. Sweetgum's super distinctive fruit.

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Sweetgum Map Florida State University Campus see in separate window

Pecan and Water Hickory

Walnut Family (Junglandaceae).
The Pecan Carya illinoinensis
Pecan is a native to North America but introduced (and now wild) in North Florida. It is a medium to large sized deciduous tree 100-140 feet tall. The leaves are alternate, pinnately compound, ten to twenty inches long, each with 9-17 leaflets that are 4-8 inches long. The flowers are unisexual, both sexes are borne in separate clusters on the same tree. The fruit are thin-shelled nuts; four winged from base to apex, borne in clusters of three to twelve. A ridge is formed where the two halves of the outer fruit come together. The fruit is dark brown in color and covered with yellow scales. The husk is thin and brittle. The husk often persists on the branch into the winter after dropping the nut. The nut is thin shelled with a reddish-brown color and pointed at both ends. The bark is grayish brown or light brown and is flat ridged and shallowly furrowed. This tree's distribution follows the river basins very closely, principally along the Mississippi and its tributaries, the Colorado River in Texas, and along some of its tributaries in Mexico. It appears that several hybrids are grown on campus. This tree is similar to other Hickories: It is distinguished from water Hickory Carya aquatica by having glabrous (i.e. hairless) leaf parts, and from black walnut (Juglans nigra) by its grayish bark (black walnut has dark furrowed bark).

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Pecan leaves

Pecan bark

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Walnut Family (Junglandaceae).
Water Hickory Carya aquatica
This 60-70 foot deciduous Florida native grows best in wet well-drained soils along stream banks and flood plains throughout the southeastern United States. It grows from eastern Carolinas, south to central Florida, and west to Eastern Texas. The alternately arranged pinnately compound leaves are 9 and 15 inches long. Each compound leaf has 7-17 lance-shaped leaflets with finely serrate margins that are 3 to 10 inches long. The topside of the leaflet is dark green and glossy, while the underside is a paler green with sparse pubescence (or hairs) present along the veins. Water hickory bark is gray or light brown with narrow cracks that give rise to reddish scales. When mature, the bark looks shaggy with flakey plates. Small greenish flowers bloom in the spring. Male and female flowers bloom on the same branch between April and May, with male flowers occurring in three-stemmed clusters called "catkins," while 2 to 10 female flowers appear on short stalks. The bitter nuts or pecans are enclosed in a dark brown, 1- to 1 ½-inch-long, thin-shelled husk, which splits along four winged seams to release the nut.

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Water hickory leaves and fruit
Water hickory bark

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Pecan and Hickory Map Florida State University Campus see in separate window

Don't be yellow about your pine ID.

FAMILY: PINACEAE

Here is a quick guide to distinguishing the three most similar and common pines around Tallahassee. These are known as the Yellow Pines for their wood color and they are slash, loblolly and longleaf pines (Pinus elliotti, P. taeda and P. palustris respectively). Hopefully this blog will help you and there will be no need to whine about pine ID after reading this. Keep an eye out for more pine descriptions on this blog but this one should really cover most of your needs around Tallahassee.

Slash and longleaf pines are associated with the widespread flatwoods ecosystem in Florida which could also be called and pine savanna - it is often prone to fire which allows the ecosystem type to persist. Loblolly is more common on the uplands in north Florida.

Slash pine has a distinctive reddish plates on its bark and 2-3 needles per fascicle - the other two have flakier bark and 3 needles per fascicle. Sessile cones on loblolly (6-10 cm) often persist on the tree year round, usually in pairs or threes, it has flaky but often furrowed bark. Longleaf pine have stalked cones longer than 15 cm and its 3 needles per fasicle are 15-30 cm long, with a distinctive silvery terminal bud.

Now let's let the pictures do all the talking.

Distinguishing yellow pines, slash, longleaf and loblolly -cones and needle drawings.

Distinguishing yellow pines, slash, longleaf and loblolly - photos.

Pinus palustris longleaf pine bark

Pinus taeda loblolly pine bark

Pinus elliottii slash pine bark (the easy one).

Pines on FSU grounds in Tallahassee (click on point for more information - link for more).

FLOWERING DOGWOOD - spring is here - soon.

FAMILY: CORNACEAE the dogwood family

One good clue that spring is here is when the dogwoods start to flower, you might get a few early ones coming out in February but usually March is the time. This year (2012) it has been kind of springy already in early February but we could be in for few more frosts. The flowering cycle of a plant is called its "phenology" (though the term applies to other cyclic natural phenomena)  you can find out more about when plants normally flower in our region at a website about Panhandle plants . Often the last frost in Tallahassee is in March....though they may occur in April. Say good-bye to cool-cold nights.

Cornus florida habit

According to the Florida Natural Area Inventory plant is typical of slope forests, scrub, uplands and sandhills, suggesting this beauty is a pretty versatile midstory tree in Florida forests. One characteristic that these vegetation types share is reasonable drainage, often with sandy soils or better than average topographic relief (for Florida).

Description: Small deciduous tree to 12 m with blocky bark. Flowers: Showy yellow heads of twenty or so miniature flowers are in the middle of creamy white subtended bracts that look like petals. The variety C. florida var. rubra has showy pink bracts. Fruit: An ellipsoid bright red berry. Leaves:3-10cm long and 2-7 cm wide opposite, broadly elliptic.

Similar to: the blocky bark can look like black haw (Viburnum rufidulum) and persimmon (Diospyros virginiana), the flowers are pretty clear indicators but the leaves can look like other dogwoods (especially stiff cornel dogwood; Cornus foemina.

Cornus florida flowers (the yellow part are various small flowers) with larger white bracts that look like what we typically think of as a "flower".

Flowering dogwood fruit.

A map of dogwood (click on the points to see more information).

The Florida State Tree

Family: ARECACEAE the palm family

The palmetto, cabbage palm, or sabal palmetto is the state tree for both South Carolina and Florida. It is native to the Bahamas, Cuba, Florida and grows as far north as Virginia. Its habitat includes mesic temperate to tropical hammocks are often dominated by oaks but may have significant component of Sabal palmetto and occur from the panhandle down into the middle of the Florida peninsula. Here we let pictures do the talking for our fabulous state tree....

Palmetto or Sabal palmetto

A typical v-shaped Sabal palmetto leaf.

A Palmetto also graces the cover of a popular book about Florida trees by Gil Nelson.

Description: Straight trunked palm to 18 m in height Flowers: During June and July, abundant, small (.5cm), fragrant, white flowers are born on drooping branched panicles. Fruit: Round and black born in drooping clusters. Leaves:Fan shaped 1-2 meters long, deeply divided and V shaped, shiny green above and gray-green below. 

Similar to: Other palms, but the V shaped fan like leaves are pretty distinctive.

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A clickable map of the larger palmetto palms on FSU grounds in Tallahassee.

American Elm - hanging on in America.

Family: Ulmaceae or the elm family which includes elms, sugarberries and hackberries

Ulmus americana

American Elm - American Elm
There are five species of elm growing wild in Florida. American elm is not the most common species on campus but it is widespread in Florida. The American elm is more or less susceptible to numerous diseases, including the Dutch elm disease (originally from Asia but first described in Holland) which was unintentionally introduced to the United States in the 1930s and killed millions of trees throught out the country - completely altering the ecology of its native range the eastern US . Disease resistant genetically modified varieties were bred and engineered and put on the market in the 1990s. It is the state tree for Massachusetts and for North Dakota. According to the Flora of North America Native American tribes used it for medicinal purposes, including coughs and colds, sore eyes, dysentary, diarrhea, broken bones, gonorrhea, and pulmonary hemorrhage, as a gynecological aid, as a bath for appendicitis, and as a wash for gunwounds. The most common elm species on campus is is the introduced ornamental Chinese elm, Ulmus parvifolia which has become naturalized in at least two counties in Florida and has self-sown seedlings coming up near plantings on campus.

 Description: Medium to large deciduous tree up to 40 m tall.Flowers: Small clustered in drooping catkins. Fruit: A flattened samara. Leaves:2-15cm long and 1-10 cm wide alternate, simple , two ranked, oval in shape. Margins doubly serrate, bases are not symmetrical - they are unequal either side of the mid-vein. Point tips. More important details: Bark light brown to gray, deeply fissured or split into plates. Wood soft. Branches pendulous, old-growth branches smooth, not winged; twigs brown, pubescent to glabrous. Trunk base is often supported by buttressed roots

Similar to: Similar to slippery elm (Ulmus rubra) but differs because the upper surfaces of the leaves are smoother, only slightly rough. Buds are chestnut brown, nearly glabrous, and pointed rather than purplish-brown, redhaired and blunt as is the case in its slippery cousin.

Ulmus americana has samaras (a type of winged seed).

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Map of American Elm on FSU grounds in Tallahassee

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