Chamaecyparis lawsoniana - Lawson falsecypress

The lawson falsecypress (also called the Port Orford Cedar) is a beautiful conifer native to the pacific northwest. The main branches are upright and acceding with weeping tips giving the tree a soft fine textured appearance.  Branching all the way to the ground, it forms a perfectly symmetrical cone shaped tree. Generally growing to about 50' they can be much larger in their native habitat. However, there are so many cultivars that they are look a bit different. Some have a bluish cast, others greenish, some with thinner branch sprays, and of course several with juvenile foliage.

This one is on Corralitos Rd near the market. I have no idea what cultivar this is but I love it.

This one below is one of my favorites, no clue as to what cultivar it is.

Foliage is scale like, tiny leaves wrapping around the stems, one on each side. You can tell if you pull the end off the small branch and see that the leaf tips are opposite one another. They also have a characteristic white X's on the branchlets.

The tree is often described as having a soft fern like appearance due to the small leaves and elongated branches. Branching sprays are flattened like most in the genus and elongated like a fern frond.

One very interesting feature of the leaves is they have translucent glands. If you hold it up to the sun you can see light coming through the glands. 

Cones are small, 1/4" - 1/3" in diameter. Purplish color until ripening brown. Opening when mature to release seeds. The scales are peltate like others in this family (cupressaceae) and when closed have a soccer ball appearance with the edges fused together.

Bark is reddish brown and stringy, and can be quite thick. Very attractive on older trees.

Other cultivars I have seen, not locally.

'Bloomhill Gold'

'Pembry Blue'

'Minima Aurea'

'Aurea Densa'

Misidentification:
Other members of the cupressaceae. Anything with scale like leaves are hard to identify. Look for the flattened sprays of foliage and the small cones that are woody at maturity. Then get a short section of the sprays and hold them up to the light looking for the glands. However, if you encounter one of the several  hundred cultivars you might be stumped.

Location:
Aptos
Clubhouse Dr and Murray

Corralitos
Corralitos Rd. between Freedom Blvd and Corralitos Market.

Santa Cruz
Some really nice old ones in the cemetery at Harvey West Park.

Acer macrophyllum - Bigleaf Maple

The bigleaf maple is a common riparian tree seen in most stream beds in the county. It's native range includes most of the pacific coast from south of Santa Cruz up to British Columbia. In Maple Valley Washington they have a big leaf contest, and some of the leaves are really huge, like up to 24" across.

This is a medium to large deciduous tree, 30-100 (but generally about 50 around here) feet tall and about half as wide as tall, forming an upright oval shape. Generally multiple trunks. Very fast growing. Fall color can be yellow in areas getting frost. 

 

 My favorite Bigleaf maple, in Portland, formerly pollarded and eventually left to grow.

Leaves are deciduous, opposite, simple, palmately lobed with 3 or 5 lobes. Leaves are variable in size, maybe 5-18" long and almost as wide. They will not get that large here. Dark green above and slightly pubescent,  pale green below. Lobes are very deep, each with several teeth but more or less entire otherwise. Very long petioles, 4-6" long. In spring the foliage can be various shades of purple when emerging from the buds. White milky sap from the petiole or stem.

This is an uncommon leaf shape in our area.

It's somewhat interesting to note that some of the plants have leaves that emerge purple and then fade to green. This is also seen in A. platanoides and resulted in a cultivar named 'Schwedleri'. Eventually someone found a purple one that lasted all summer. I am surprised that has not happened with this species. Okay, so it has, there is a cultivar called 'Mocha Rose' introduced from non other that Bucholtz and Bucholtz Nursery (one of my all time favorites). Here is a great link to a blog post on this cultivar and species by Talon B himself Article on species and cultivars. You should look at his photographs, wow.

(There's a cultivar called Seattle Sentinel' that is columnar and might be worth having around here.)

Flowers (seen above) are quite showy in the early spring. Staminate (male) and perfect flowers in drooping clusters, up to 10" long. Flowers are slightly fragrant, 1/4" diameter and yellow. 

Fruit is typical of maples, with the samaras arranged in pairs. Samaras about 2" long, wings at about 90 degrees or less. Samaras arranged in long drooping clusters up to 10" long. Light tan colored and covered with yellow or brown hairs except on the wings which are glabrous.

Stout twigs, green to reddish colored, large buds with hair on the margins. Notice the white sap coming out of the stem by the bud, one of several maples that have this.

Trunks lightly checked, mostly silver gray for many years.

Fall color is a nice yellow if we have a good year, sometimes our weather does not lead to great colors. First image is in Nicene Marks State Park, the second one in the Pacific Northwest.

Misidentification:
You might think its a London Plane but the LP has alternate leaves, or you might think its a Silver Maple, Acer saccharium. The silver maple gets its name from the silver undersides of the leaves so look for that, as well as the leaves. The silver maple leaves are smaller, the lobes are more deeply incised and have more minor teeth on them than our native.

Silver on the left - Big leaf on the right

Location:
Any riparian area. Along Hecker Pass going over to Gilroy.
Highway 1 and 41st ave in the clover leaf by Home Depot and the opposite side.

Aptos

Loma Prieta 736 or close. There is one on the other side of the street as well.

Aptos creek road, up the road a bit, near the steel bridge are some nice ones.

Capitola
Along Park Drive nearing the beach, on the railroad side of the street.

506 El Salto on Depot Hill

Magnolia grandiflora - Southern Magnolia

Southern Magnolia is a large evergreen flowering tree to about 50-60' tall and 30-40' wide forming a round topped canopy with massive branches and large leaves. Slow to medium grower. Native to southeastern US. These are my favorites, at the Aptos Hotel and in the parking lot on Church St in SC.

Leaves are evergreen, simple, elliptical shaped,  6-10" long, dark glossy green upper surface and usually some amount of copper colored hairs on the bottom surface, some more so than others, margins entire.

Stems stout, may be covered with the same copper hairs or smooth depending on the specimen. Distinct line around the stem at the nodes.

Flowers are pure white, large, 8-10" in diameter and often pretty high up in the tree. Flowers form a nice open bowl shape when opening in spring into summer. Fragrant as well but you better be tall. Lots of sex parts, males on bottom. 

Fruit looks like a cone of some sort but is really a woody aggregation of follicles that open up on one suture and release or showoff an orange seed. Below is a mature one and an immature one. The small dots below the fruit area is where the stamens were attached.

Bark is smooth and gray.

Many cultivars exist but the easiest one to identify is 'Little Gem'. Everything is smaller, size to 20' x 10' wide and leaves to about 6".

Misidentification: can't think of anything. Maybe a Ficus but not ones that grow here.

Location:
Aptos Hotel on Soqule Dr. parking lot on Church between Cedar and Center.

Santa Cruz: Downtown, Church St between Cedar and Center.

Watsonville: Holohan near East Lake.

Pseudostuga menziesii - Douglas Fir

The douglas fir is a native conifer that spreads over much of the west coast into the mountains of Colorado and into Mexico. Generally not planted in residential landscapes or even larger commercial ones and likely the ones you have may be there naturally. In it's native habitat the douglas fir is a huge tree, up to 300' and is the source of most of our common building materials. Usually too large even in cultivation to grow anywhere but the largest of lots. It is none the less a beautiful tree. The English love to use this tree. We buy one as our Christmas tree yearly from Hester Family Farms.

This is an "old" one in RDM.

Leaves are linear, 1-1-1/4" long, green upper surface, lighter on the lower surface. Leaves arranged spirally but bending making a V. The bases are bent allowing the leaves to form a flattened spray or at least all the leaves pointing upward. The terminal buds are quite long, pointed, and imbricately scaled.

Notice the way the leaves are bent at the base. Some have referred to this as being like a hockey stick.

Cones, 3-4", brown in color, are perhaps the most recognizable characteristic of the doug fir. Actually it's the three tipped bracts that are the key. The funny story is that something scares a mouse into the cone and it can only get so far in and you see the tail and two rear legs.

Male and female "flowers" are red.

Bark on old trees very deeply furrowed.

Misidentification: Look at the base of the tree for the cones, you cant miss them. The terminal buds are very distinct and look like nothing else, the firs are mostly covered in resin and the spruces have somewhat rosette like bud scales. Leaves fall with a slight bump, not like a fir.

Location: Nice big one fell on a house in Santa Cruz last year.
Nisene Marks, Corner of Monterey and Bay Ave.
On River St across from Probuild.

Metasequoia glyptostroboides - Dawn Redwood

This beautiful deciduous conifer has a very interesting history. It was actually discovered by westerners as a fossil before anyone found living specimens. It was given the name Metasequoia, the meta being a prefix added to many extinct organisms linking it's relationship to our common Sequoia. It was discovered by a group of plant hunters sent to China from the Arnold Arboretum prior to WWII. Seeds collected during that tip are the main source of all the trees in cultivation. Read the book "A Reunion of Trees" by Stephen Spongberg. Seen in Capitola at the base of the Trestle Bridge.

As I said, its a large deciduous conifer, maybe 75' around here, with a broadly conical shape. Lower branches usually are persistent unlike the coastal redwood. Very graceful, and beautiful bright green foliage turning slightly yellow but mostly brown in the winter.  This one is located in Harvey West park.

Leaves are linear, flat, soft, light green, about an inch or so long. They are oppositely arranged or really whorled but twisting at the base and laying flat to appear two-ranked like true firs. This picture shows the winter coloration just starting.

This is more typical of the color in spring and summer.

Leaves on two types of stems, permanent which are brown and deciduous, those remaining green. Those that are on green stems fall as a unit in what is called deciduous leaflets. You may have noticed this same occurrence on our coastal redwood that the ground is covered with branchlets and not individual leaves.

Cones resemble those of Sequoia but a smaller, maybe less than an inch and more tan than brown. The scales are wider than those of Sequoia.

Sequoia on the left, Metasequoia on the right.

The bark and trunks on old plants are really pretty amazing. The trunks develop deep cavities or indentations when they are quite old. Mature specimens can be more attractive in winter than summer. This one is at Longwood Gardens.

This is a grove at the National Arboretum in DC.

Fall color is not really great but is a brownish gold color, some years better than others. Sometimes the leaves fall green.

Fantastic grove in Corralitos across form the Corralitos Market.

Misidentification:
Bald Cypress. Not really common here but there are a few. You can tell the difference by looking at the lateral branchlets, they are alternate and not opposite.

Locations:
Nice ones abound

Aptos:
141 Venetian Rd RDM flats a grove of them.

Felton:
My guess it's the largest one around. 171 Main St, right off Hiway 9.

Freedom:
Corner of Corralitos Rd. and Freedom Blvd, in front of the restaurant.

Corralitos:
4 corners - on the Browns and Eureka Canyon side. At least 5 trees.
1765 Hames Rd.

Santa Cruz:
110 Golf Course Drive by the city maintenance yard.
626 King St. Nice one, shaped by the power lines.
In the lawn in the front of Santa Cruz High School on the left side.
204 Iowa at the intersection with Bay. Seen from Bay St.

Soquel: 4615 Wharf Road