April 10, 2021

This Week's Tour...
...met at 9:00AM Saturday on the Beltline Eastside Trail near Parish (R.I.P...soon to reopen as "Painted Park"!). We walked for 1 1/2 hours, covering 1 mile of the Beltline, ending at Ponce City Market.

"The Tourists"...
...shouting out to this week's tourists, including visitors from the great states of Texas and California! 

Thanks for a great tour!

Map of the week...
...we spoke about Old Fourth Ward park and that location's previous lack of commercial development due to its swampy landscape. What do you expect? It's a watershed draining down to the former site of a lake!  Today, it's a 5-acre park with a 2-acre stormwater detention pond capable of storing water from a 500 year flood!

Thanks for the map, 

Landscape Architecture Foundation!

Tree of the week...
...singling out one of the hundreds of specimens from the dozens of collections along the arboretum.

I'm not really singling out one species, but a whole genus and their "flowers" that are on display this time of year. I'm talking about the catkins of oak trees, the showy male part of their reproductive cycle that will soon fall off the tree, having done their part, and leave the female part to grow into acorns in the fall.

Querus Bicolor

White Swamp Oak

"Stump" of the week...
...featuring a question raised during the tour that Jeff couldn't answer.

Q: What is that flower?

A: All along the Eastside Trail, many of the native flowers planted (and self-seeded) there are coming into bloom. One of the most prolific this time of year is the Daisy Fleabane. 

Erigeron annuus