Urban Tree Book

"...the ideal field guide to city trees for urban folks. ... Plotnik writes with botanical precision and an engaging and lively style .... This user-friendly guide ...will delight amateurs and professionals alike ..." --Carl Reidel, American Forests

"I like this book. It provides the perfect entry for someone who likes trees but is intimidated by all those horticultural tomes. … Plotnik's style is engaging and accessible. … Read it right through or browse…. –Dr. Nina Bassuk, Urban Horticulture Institute, Cornell University, in Taking Root

"... unique in its combination of precise botanical information, beautiful drawings, and fascinating details. ... a great addition to any tree lover's library." --Jennifer Spear O'Mara, New York State Conservationist

"As well as being useful for local excursions, "The Urban Tree Book" makes a terrific out-of-state traveling companion." --New Orleans Times-Picayune

"...a wonderful book, a comprehensive, well researched, beautifully illustrated study of urban trees." --Susan Gooberman, Education Director, Trees New York

"Avoiding the dry descriptions typical of field guides, this book ... offers the perfect way to explore nature without ever leaving home." --Hillary Young, E Magazine; the environmental magazine

NEW: "A lush garden of information ... brimful of revelations. Plotnik's keen eye and whimsical approach yield refreshingly original results. ... Precise and gracefully rendered drawings. ... The author's exuberance is fueld by a genuine affection that's highly contagious." --Louise Unitt, The Wood Duck, Hamilton, Ont.

The Urban Tree Book describes the trees of city and town neighborhoods, the trees that people live with every day. Rich in human interest and detailed drawings, this "uncommon" field guide identifies some 200 species to be discovered and enjoyed in urban walks and explorations. Backed by the expertise of The Morton Arboretum, the author describes, in lively profiles:

Completely up to date for the 21st century, The Urban Tree Book goes hand in hand with "urban forestry," a burgeoning environmental approach to greening our cities. With its tree profiles, resource sections (including Web sites), primer on trees, and an appendix on "Tree Wellness," the guide informs, delights, and inspires any tree observer from amateur to forest professional.

There are many fine tree guides, but the urban or suburban dweller who wants a readable, focused introduction to neighborhood trees will find most too comprehensive, too dry and technical, or too meager in commentary. Only The Urban Tree Book surveys the most wonderful city-tough trees with an essayist's sensibility, artist's eye, and researcher's depth.

A member of American Forests, Arthur Plotnik is a distinguished book author and former American Library Association executive. His newest book is Spunk & Bite, an acclaimed writers' guide published by Random house Reference in late 2005. Along with award-winning artist and illustrator Mary Phelan (his wife), he is a passionate observer of trees in their urban context. The two live on a Chicago street blessed with ashes, maples, and horse-chestnuts.

A line of weeping willows is like a billboard announcing winter's end. The long shoots turn bright yellow and the happy sight along urban waterways helps destroy an old myth: that willows are saddening. Here's an excerpt from our chapter on Salix babylonica and other willows.

In China, where the babylonica species--mother of weeping willows--grew wild, Han Dynasty poets sang of such trees, as did many bards over the next two millennia. The species came to England in the 18th century, supposedly when poet and gardener Alexander Pope spotted a twine of live willow twigs on a package from the Mediterranean. He planted the sprig, and, since almost any live willow cutting will root in moist soil, it became the celebrated Babylon weeping willow of his Twickenham Garden. (It was later chopped up for tourist trinkets).

Many a weeping willow, including those of Washington, D.C.’s East Potomac Park, is said to have descended from a Babylon willow on St. Helena , Napoleon’s place of exile. Napoleon brooded and later lay buried beneath the tree. One writer argues that the original willow broke in 1821, was replanted on Napoleon’s grave from cuttings, and did not survive souvenir hunters. However, the American Forests Famous & Historic Trees program (see "Resources") does offer seedlings descended from a Napoleon willow cutting brought to the States in the 1870s.

On a cool, sunny April 21 (2005), I attended a ceremony marking a key victory against the Asian Longhorn Beetle in the Chicago area, though it was hardly the end of the war.

Thanks to a major, seven-year eradication effort, the pest has not been spotted in my neighborhood (six miles north of downtown) and others for the past two years. What this means is that certain restrictions would be lifted on wood coming in or out of the areas.

But it was a bigger deal than that, as evidenced by the attendance of federal representatives and high state and local officials at the windy, outdoor event, and the reading of a gubernatorial proclamation proclaiming the day Asian Longhorned Beetle Awareness Day.

Since the first Chicago detection of the bug, which had already devastated areas of Brooklyn, New York, some 1,770 infested trees have been found and removed from eastern Illinois. More than 2,682 non-host trees have been planted. About 91,600 trees were treated with insecticide in 2004.

One could see the happy results on the very street of the ceremony, where residents had keened en masse seven years ago over the cutting down of their old parkway trees. From the dreary, emasculated landscape has risen a canopy of about 20-to-25 feet now, inclunding healthy oaks, lush dawn redwoods, and flowering pear trees.

On my own street, new lindens, ashes, honey locusts, and catalpas have replaced the big silver maples and other trees that had been brought down.

It has been amazing and heartening to watch the cooperation between so many concerned groups, from the community organizations to the federal Department of Agriculture, with special impetus coming from Mayor Richard Daley, a professed tree-lover.

Yet, with alarm, we note the invasion of emerald ash borer beetles (Agrilus planipennis) decimating ash trees in Michigan and Ontario, with some 100,000 trees lost in the last five years. The Detroit area has been among those hard hit. Late signs of the infestation include gentle dieback and a last-effort growth of leaves along the trunk and limbs.

Implanted in the cambium layer low on the trunk, the larvae tunnel in serpentine patterns or "galleries," cutting off the tree's circulation system. When the larvae mature, they chew out a small (3-4 mm.) D-shaped hole as they exit. Bark over the galleries eventually fluffs off. After about three years, the tree is dead. More aggressive than the Asian longhorn beetle, the emerald borer (native to China) goes for sick or healthy trees and moves around freely. It will invade elm when ash is unavailable.

This, along with red oak borer in the Ozarks, Asian longhorn, gypsy moth, and sudden-death oak fungus, to mention a few current scourges, is enough to fuel the barren hellscapes of our nightmares. But it also reminds us to treasure and preserve trees at every opportunity, and for urban dwellers the opportunities are many.

Unfortunately, many zealous contractors and homeowners still pile mulching woodchips against the trunk in a volcano shape instead of keeping it away from the trunk and spreading it toward the dripline. Volcano or "cone" mulching tends to rot the bark it encloses and set it up for disease.

On streets without grass parkways, where tree pits are used, city planters are placing structural soil beneath metal grates. The compound consists of large chunks of granite aggregate, soil, sand, hydrogel, and nutrients. The aggregate is coated, in effect, and its chunky size allows plenty of air for the roots and an avenue of easy growth. Lucky roots can find their way to soil beneath the sidewalks, but often the tree pits are boxed in by cement, assuring that the tree will be small and "temporary." Grates are supposed to break up or be broken when the tree outgrows its initial center hole. Some guerilla treekeepers keep a sledgehammer in their toolkit to give the tree a little help when it meets the metal.