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"...
What fun! Despite a persistent drizzle, 2 hardy tourists stuck it out...one who walked from his Edgewood home and the other who came all the way from Detroit!
Pics of the week...
..Ponce City Market then and now:
Top is undated photo of the Sears building, notably without eastern wing (middle left), with Ponce de Leon Park (right) and Ford Factory (lower middle). And in an unusual twist...look how much of the old car parking has been replaced by Old 4th Ward Park!
Tree of the week...
...singling out one of the hundreds of specimens from the dozens of collections along the arboretum.
Shout out to the Black Gums or Tupelos that are interspersed with native oaks and pig nut hickories along the "Olmstead" section of the Eastside Trail.
"Nyssa sylvatica grows to 20–25 metres (66–82 ft) tall, rarely to 35 metres (115 ft), with a trunk diameter of 50–100 centimetres (20–39 in), rarely up to 170 centimetres (67 in). These trees typically have a straight trunk with the branches extending outward at right angles.[3] The bark is dark gray and flaky when young, but it becomes furrowed with age, resembling alligator hide on very old stems. The twigs of this tree are reddish-brown, usually hidden by a greyish skin. The pith is chambered with greenish partitions.."
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