2. Scarlet Oak (Quercus coccinea),  Native. 

In order to keep this beautiful scarlet oak at a size and shape appropriate for the space available in this lot, it has had some questionable pruning and shaping in the early years, which accounts for its unusual shape.  Believe it or not, this shaping could have occurred as much as 200 years ago as this is clearly a very old tree.  That age makes this red oak but a middle-aged tree, since they can easily live to be several hundred years old with the oldest known red oaks coming in at 500!  The 58 or so oak species of North America can be divided broadly into the red oak and white oak groups, each with many species.  Each group has its own flagship species, the white oak and the red oak, which many people are familiar with but many people may not know about the two groups. The beauty before you is a scarlet oak, one of the members of the red oak group.  All the white oaks have leaves with rounded lobes with no points on the leaf tips, whereas the red oak group’s leaves have pointy tips, even if you have to look hard for the little points sometimes.  If there is a leaf on the sidewalk, pick it up and confirm that you see the pointy tips!  Acorn production is another notable difference between the two groups with trees in the white oak group producing sweeter acorns and doing so each and every year.  Red oak trees produce acorns higher in tannins, so they are more bitter and these acorns are only produced every other year because they take longer to mature.  A large, mature oak tree of either group can produce up to 10,000 acorns in a bumper crop year!

This tree can be found at coordinates:  39.419565, -77.425101

4. American Sweetgum (Liquidambar styraciflua), Native

The Latin name of this tree is so mellifluous, it just rolls off your tongue like honey, so don’t be afraid to try it!  The Latin species name is pronounced “Styro-SI-flua, with a short i sound. If you can reach one of its beautiful star-shaped leaves, crush it and give it a sniff—its wonderfully spicy scent is not surprising since it is a close relative of witch hazel, a botanical family with potent chemicals often used medicinally.  The gummy sap was used by some native peoples for its sweet smell.  They mixed it with herbs and stuffed the goo into reeds and then lit it like incense.  The flavorful, resinous gum was also used like chewing gum.  In the southern United States, it is second only to oak for its hardwood production.  Look down at your feet for its seed balls.  Unless it is a landscaping cultivar of sweetgum, which are bred to be sterile, you can usually find the distinctive prickly balls under a sweetgum tree year-round. 

This tree can be found at coordinates:  39°25'04.7"N 77°25'31.4"W

6. Weeping Katsura (Cercidiphyllum japonicum ‘Pendulum’), Non-native

A lovely, non-native tree, but non-invasive, the katsura tree has been cultivated for years due to the 4-season interest it adds to the landscape.  In the spring, its foliage emerges with a hint of purple, the summer foliage is lush and lovely and in the fall, it has a buttery yellow color and emits a subtle, brown sugar scent as you walk by.  In the winter, especially for this weeping specimen, it has a lovely shape and pretty bark.  According to ancient Chinese and Japanese folklore, a man on the moon was being punished and was assigned by the gods to cut down the giant katsura tree that grows there, but because of the tree’s magic, it could not be cut down, so the man on the moon is trapped there forever and the shadow of the giant tree is visible to this day as the big shadowy area on the surface!

This tree can be found at coordinates:  39.417273, -77.424572

8. English Elm (Ulmus procera), Non-native

Located on the Frederick High School campus, this special tree should only be visited after school hours and during summer break.  Not only is this behemoth tree the Frederick County champion English elm, but also number two in the state on the Maryland Big Trees website!  Check it out on mdbigtrees.com.  There are many champion trees in Frederick county that are publicly accessible.  For example--visit Gambrill Mill at the Monocacy Battlefield National Park, Rosehill Manor and Ballenger Creek Park, to name just a few.  Estimates vary, but it is quite safe to say this tree is well over 200 years old.  It is highly likely that English settlers brought the little seedling tree over from England since English elms do not produce viable seeds.  Instead, they reproduce by root suckering at the base of the tree and the little baby tree would have been dug up and nurtured during its journey all the way across the Atlantic Ocean some time in the late 1700’s or very early 1800’s.  Give that ol’ gal a hug because she’s had quite a history.  Not only was she a Witness Tree to the turmoil of the Civil War, but beginning in 1939, as a stout and wise one-hundred-year-old, she began to silently witness thousands of Frederick High School students becoming healthy young adults and moving on to do great things. Oh!  The things she has seen!

This tree can be found at coordinates:  39.4166, -77.425798

10. Ginkgo (Ginkgo biloba), Non-native

Ginkgo trees have a fascinating story.  Native to China and traditionally grown on Chinese and Japanese temple grounds, for many years they were unknown to the Western scientific community before the East opened up to the West.  Ginkgo biloba evolved about 270 million years ago and is considered a living fossil, all its relatives being long since extinct.  It’s not even a flowering plant, being more closely related to conifers such as pines, which are much more ancient than flowering plants such as grasses, roses and maples trees.  Ginkgos have been used medicinally for thousands of years in Asian traditional medicine for everything from improving brain function to heart health.  This home, along with all of those in the 100 block of College Terrace, was built in 1939 and the ginkgo tree was planted that same year making 2019 its 80 th birthday!  When it was built, this was the very edge of the city of Frederick, with nothing beyond but farms.  Baker Park did not yet exist.  According to the owners, the leaves are voluminous, so they usually have to clear them with snow shovels, which is effective because the leaves are small. The leaves don't always come down at once, but if there is a super cold snap, it creates the conditions where most of the bright yellow fall leaves can fall within 24 hours. This lovely phenomenon happens occasionally but not every year.

This tree can be found at coordinates: 39°25'02.3"N 77°25'19.5"W

12. Black Walnut (Juglans nigra), Native

A gorgeous giant of a native tree, black walnuts are easy to spot from far away with their furrowed, black bark and the stout twig pattern.  Both these features make them easily recognized in the winter when their beautiful, black bones make a distinctive presentation.  I like to call these three Baker Park trees “The Three Sisters” and I hope you get to see them in the winter when I feel they are at their most beautiful.  Black walnut was often used in the Colonial Era as an indicator species.  Landowners would send out scouts to see if black walnut was growing on a prospective land purchase.  If it was, this would indicate the land was fertile and worth a higher purchase price.  The mild-tasting walnuts you buy in the store are English walnuts unless specifically labeled black walnuts, which have a much stronger flavor. 

This tree can be found at coordinates:   39.415158,-77.42198

14. London Plane (Platanus X acerifolia), Non-native

Most people who know a bit about trees would identify this as a sycamore tree, not realizing it is a sycamore hybrid very commonly planted in urban environments all over the world because of its tolerance for atmospheric pollution and compacted soil.  A London plane tree is a hybrid between a native sycamore and an Asian plane tree.  Many of our downtown trees that look like sycamores are actually London planes.  To tell the difference, observe the leaves, bark and seed balls.  The leaves of London planes are more deeply lobed and shiny on top than native sycamores.  Also, look at the sycamore ball, which contains the seeds.  In a native sycamore tree, each ball has its own stem, but in the London plane, many of the seed balls have two hanging along a single stem like beads on a string.  Sycamore trees also typically have bright white bark at the top and London plane trees have a color more creamy or grayish.  These trees are extraordinarily long-lived and grow to enormous sizes, the largest in Europe being close to 36 feet in circumference and well over 200 years old.  The largest specimen in the US is in the Grotto of the University of Notre Dame in Southbend, Indiana at about 19 feet around so it would take four people holding hands to hug that tree!  Just give Frederick’s London plane trees some time…  

This tree can be found at coordinates:   39.415583,-77.420778

16. American Basswood (Tilia americana), Native

Basswoods, aka linden trees, aka lime trees (in England, which can be very confusing for tourists) are also nicknamed “bee trees,” because when they are covered with their distinctive blooms in the spring, they are so attractive to pollinators they can be heard buzzing from a hundred yards away.  If you can’t hear the bees, you can smell the linden tree flowers’ honey-lemon scent from close to a mile away!  Once you take note of their unusual and interesting blooms, you will learn to recognize all the varieties of linden trees easily, as they retain remnants of these blooms throughout the season, and they can be seen from far away once you know what you are looking for.  

Cousins of the American basswood, little-leaf linden trees are very common street trees, because they are quite happy in the sidewalk and parking lot wells.  Costco here in Frederick  has used little-leaf trees as its primary parking lot tree; there are many on Key Parkway; and they have also been spotted near Kohls.

This tree can be found at coordinates:   39°25'00.4"N 77°25'01.7"W

18. White Ash (Fraxinus americana), Native

Ash trees are one of our native forest trees and have been favorites for landscaping for many years because of their stunning architecture, beautiful foliage and interesting bark.  However, they are the victims of an invasive pest called the emerald ash bore, which has ravaged the population of ash trees here and everywhere.  A beautiful, emerald green beetle kept under control by predators of its own in its home range of Asia, here in North America it was unknown until 2002. This means our local ecosystems had nothing in place to prevent the borer from eating its way across the country, killing nearly all our ash trees. This one before you and more than 500 other ashes in Frederick are being treated by our Frederick city arborist, Tom Rippeon.  Note the distinctive bark with its diamond shapes and its large, compound leaves with blueish-white undersides (giving it the name white ash), each compound leaf reaching up to a foot long!

This tree can be found at coordinates:   39°25'00.6"N 77°24'55.6"W

20. Southern Magnolia (Magnolia grandifolia), Native

This tree can be found in front of the Church Street parking structure.  To get to it from the 2nd Street, you can cut through the alley behind Brewer’s Alley Restaurant, which is a narrow alley with a beautiful mural that extends its entire length.  The species name of this distinctive Southern species, grandifolia, means large leaf and you can see why!  Evolving 120 million years ago, it is the oldest of all known flowering plants. This evergreen beauty has lush, creamy white and sweet-smelling blooms that appear sporadically throughout the summer, instead of one bloom period like most species.  A long-lived species in The South, it is rare to find a very old specimen this far north but there was a very famous 200-year-old tree on the White House grounds that was sadly cut down in 2017 due to poor health.  At one time, this particular iconic, White House tree was featured on the twenty-dollar bill!  

This tree can be found at coordinates:   39.4152778,-77.4121054

22. White Ash (Fraxinus americana), Native

Drink in the beauty of this lovely native tree because in ten years, ash trees will be a rare sight indeed as only specimens being given a regular dose of a chemical treatment will still be alive in North America.  Our lovely ash trees are the victims of an invasive pest called the emerald ash bore, which has ravaged the population of ash.  This one before you and more than 500 other ashes in Frederick are being treated by our Frederick county arborist, Tom Rippeon.   Ashes are dioecious trees, meaning there are male trees and female trees.  Many other trees and plants produce both male and female flowers on the same tree but ash trees are like the familiar holly—you need two to tango.  Note the clusters of dried flowers clinging to the limbs, if present (you can see them in the photo, as well.)  

These pom-pom-like clusters reveal that this is a male ash tree because the female trees have the elongated seeds, instead. Note that the underside of these lush leaves is whitish, giving the white ash its common name.  If you see this tree in the winter, take note of its opposite branching pattern, which shows its membership in the exclusive MAB-DOG tree club:  Only Maple, Ash, Buckeye and Dogwood trees have opposite branching, all other trees have alternate branching.  Since buckeye is pretty rare, dogwoods are pretty small and ashes are soon to be rare, most large trees you encounter with opposite branching will be some type of maple.  As you continue on your walk, compare the branching pattern of other trees and you’ll see that most are alternate.  The opposite branching can be seen in the photo here, as well. 

This tree can be found at coordinates: 39°24'59.4"N 77°24'27.5"W

24. Dogwood (Cornus florida), Native

If one would like to plant a dependable native tree with a modest size that won’t dominate your landscape and one that looks beautiful in all seasons, you can’t go wrong with a common dogwood tree.   They start with a stunning show of beautiful blooms in early spring, followed by lush foliage in the summer, deep red fall color and their distinctive alligator skin bark in the winter. Their “petals” aren’t actually petals at all, but bright white bracts that will draw a pollinator’s attention to the smaller yellow blooms in their center.  The pollinated flowers produce red drupes that are an important source of food for wildlife.  The dogwood tree has significance for Christianity as it is purported that the cross upon which Christ was crucified was constructed of dogwood.  Additionally, the four white bracts are in a cross-shape and it blooms around Easter in some years, giving the dogwood tree additional significance to Christians. Unfortunately, dogwoods are not long-lived trees, living only an average of 30 years, but once the main trunk dies, they often sprout a ring of suckers that make quite a showing as well.  Under ideal conditions, they occasionally live much longer, up to 80 years!

This tree can be found at coordinates:  39.415806,-77.404861