May 21, 2023

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"...
Small group on this Sunday tour (for which I subbed), but from a mighty range of backgrounds, one a ViHi neighbor (and Trees Atlanta Docent!) and the other a Peruvian doctoral candidate from Georgia Tech. Go Jackets!

Thanks for a great tour!

Pic of the week...
...building permit for Western Electric Company Plant on Ralph McGill, 1939:

Built in 1939, Western Electric Company built telephones, switchboards, and their components here along the Beltline until they moved outside of town in 1975. The building sat vacant until purchased and renovated as loft in 1995. Imagine a huge, beautiful building sitting empty on today's Beltline!

Thanks, National Register of Historic Places!

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

What is unique about a sassafras tree?

"Description: Sassafras trees are unusual among trees because they have three distinctive leaf shapes. As seen in the photo (right), these shapes are 1) a simple, unlobed leaf, 2) an asymmetrical leaf resembling a mitten, and 3) a three-lobed leaf."

Sassafras

 Sassafras albidum

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

Q: Cottonwood and aspen are in the same genus (Populus deltoides vs. Populus tremuloides), but they seem to have very different water needs.

A: Still researching, but seems to be a question of the evolutionary paths of cottonwoods and aspen, with one species adapting to wet creek banks and the other "tolerant of wide variations in climate." U.S. Forest Service