The Tree Book: Superior Selections for Landscapes, Streetscapes, and Gardens

Michael Dirr is the guru of woody plants. Beginning in 1975, his “Manual of Woody Landscape Plants” – through six editions as of 2009 – has been required reading for any horticultural student. These books are very technical and rely on line drawings to illustrate their subjects.

Working with Timber Press, Dirr changed directions in 1997 with the publication of “Dirr’s Hardy Trees and Shrubs.” Described by the author as “a photographic essay that profiles and highlights the most common woody landscape plants,” this proved an excellent way to reach a more general gardening audience. This style continued with “Dirr’s Encyclopedia of Trees and Shrubs” (2012).

While this last book will remain an important reference because of its inclusion of shrubs and helpful lists of selection criteria, the photographic essay approach reached a new height with the publication of “The Tree Book.” For the first time, it is written with a co-author, Keith Warren. While Dirr is from the southeast, spending his academic career at the University of Georgia, Warren is a retired tree breeder and nurseryman from Oregon. His voice makes this new book especially valuable to gardeners in the Pacific Northwest.

Photographs are still the eye-grabbers of this huge book (940 pages!), but the text has been expanded to achieve the right balance of being informative without excess detail, and is often very funny. Reading about Sourwood (Oxydendrum arboretum), I learned that in its native Georgia it can reach 60’, but “in the dry summers of the West, a 20’ height is a big tree.” The authors claim this as a favorite species, looking good in all seasons, with the best in the fall: “Like a drum roll, the fall color comes on slowly and intensifies, finally reaching a crescendo.”

The authors do an excellent job of highlighting the best of new cultivars or selections of their subjects. For example, I learned of nine cultivars of one my favorite trees, the Persian Ironwood (Parrotia persica) – I only knew of one! There is even a newly available species, Parrotia subaequalis, which in Oregon has fall color that “is consistently brilliant red, brighter than P. persica.”

This is a reference book and not available to check out from the Miller Library. However, if you are planting new trees, or want to learn more about trees, I recommend visiting the library and seeking out this book.

Published in Garden Notes: Northwest Horticultural Society, Fall 2019

The Trees of North America

Trees of North America book cover “The Trees of North America” is an excellent new book and winner of one of the three book awards given by the AHS in 2018. Who is the author? It’s complicated.

The short answer is François-André Michaux (1770-1855) and Thomas Nuttall (1786-1859) with considerable help from skilled engravers, the most famous being Pierre-Joseph Redouté (1759-1840). Their collective publications span the first half of the 19th century, produced in both France and the United States, and first in French and later in English. The full bibliographic story is in the preface of this new book.

The New York Botanical Garden (NYBG) in their LuEsther T. Mertz Library has perhaps the most complete collection of the (at least) 16 different editions by Michaux and Nuttall. Mertz Library staff have produced this new book, using faithful reproductions of the plates. The horticulture staff for NYBG add notes with current updates of nomenclature, ranges, and horticultural uses.

Enough words. This is mostly a picture book, but what a glorious one it is. We are fortunate to have an 1857-1865 original in the Miller Library rare book collection. While a reprint can never quite match a hand-colored original, this comes very close.

These accurate images made the original the standard reference book for North America trees until the early 20th century. A concluding essay by David Allen Sibley explains the process of making the reprinted images – a process as complex as the authorship. Sibley declares, “The end results are beautiful, and the prints are true works of art on their own, but they are different from the originals.”

Excerpted from the Summer 2018 Arboretum Bulletin.

Cal Poly UFEI SelecTree

A tree selection guide from Cal Poly Urban Forests Ecosystems Institute including trees native to CA and elsewhere. Allows search by characteristics and mentions general root growth tendencies for many trees that grow in the PNW. Although this service is based in California it provides considerable practical information for all regions about many tree species and their suitability in urban environments. A nursery connection map helps locate sources to buy specific trees.

Witness Tree

Witness tree cover How would it be to spend a whole year observing a forest, the changing seasons and all the beings – plants and animals – that lived there. This is exactly what Lynda Mapes, a science reporter for “The Seattle Times,” decided to find out. She lived on the edge of the Harvard Forest, a 3,000 acre managed research forest in Petersham, Massachusetts, over 60 miles west of the main Harvard campus. “The Witness Tree” is the story of this undertaking.

To focus her attention, she concentrates on one tree, a northern red oak (Quercus rubra), of early middle age for this species. She examines this tree in every conceivable way, and with the help of experts from many professional and avocational perspectives. She also considers the humans that interact with the tree and the forest, including the cultural history of the area, and its impact on the natural history.

Throughout there is an ongoing consideration of climate and other changes in the forest. Both from the long view over millennia, and the more recent changes, such as the increase of the hemlock woolly adelgid (Adelges tsugae), and near demise of such forest stalwarts as the American elm (Ulmus americana) and the American chestnut (Castanea dentata). Some of this is told from the supposed perspective of her beloved hundred-plus-year-old red oak.

Mapes stayed in New England during the winter of 2014-2015, one of the coldest and snowiest on record. She writes, “While I froze in the Northeast, my husband at home in Seattle was cutting the grass and watching flowers burst forth in the warmest winter on record.” Contrasts like this, and the author’s gentle role in teasing them out of the world around her, makes this a very satisfying book.

Excerpted from the Fall 2017 Arboretum Bulletin.

Garden Trees Resource List

A list of the best books, articles and websites on selecting and caring for garden trees.

US Forest Service Treesearch

A repository of peer-reviewed and full-text information on research and development conducted by tree scientists in the Forest Service.

Silvics of North America

This is a full text electronic reproduction of Burns, Russell M., and Barbara H. Honkala, tech. coords. 1990. Silvics of North America: 1. Conifers; 2. Hardwoods. Agriculture Handbook 654. USDA, Forest Service, Washington, DC. vol.2, 877 p.” The silvical characteristics of about 200 forest tree species and varieties are described. Most are native to the 50 United States and Puerto Rico, but a few are introduced and naturalized. Information on habitat, life history, and genetics is given for 15 genera, 63 species, and 20 varieties of conifers and for 58 genera, 128 species, and 6 varieties of hardwoods. These represent most of the commercially important trees of the United States and Canada and some of those from Mexico and the Caribbean Islands, making this a reference for virtually all of North America. A special feature of this edition is the inclusion of 19 tropical and subtropical species. These additions are native and introduced trees of the southern border of the United States from Florida to Texas and California, and also from Hawaii and Puerto Rico.”

Keyword: Trees