Sophora japonica - Japanese Pagoda Tree

A Japanese Pagoda tree is a rare site around here, I have seen only a few. Looking like almost all the other deciduous trees with pinnately compound leaves, it has a few distinct characteristics.  Growing quite large, the one on Sumner Dr. is very typical, reaching 50' with a broad wide spreading crown.

Usually do not develop fall color, but heck, this one did.

Leaves are deciduous, alternately arranged, pinnately compound to about 10" with 7 to 15 or so leaflets. Leaflets are medium to light green, narrowly ovate to lanceolate, 1-2" long.  

Typical of may plants in the pea family it has swollen petiole bases.

Also a bit different is the flattened petiolule (leaflet petiole) of the leaflet. You can also see some whitish hairs on the veins.

Stems are green, for a long time. Hidden under the swollen petiole base is a black bud. Not many plants have black buds.

Flowers are small pea-like, yellowish white appearing late July. Lasting only a few weeks they soon fall and cover the ground. Borne in large 12" long by 12" wide clusters.

Fruit is a bean like pod, but with distinct constrictions between each "pea" inside. Persistent through winter. Interesting but can be messy.

Native to China and Korea but not Japan .... who makes up these common names anyway, and I guess its new botanical name is Styphnolobium japonicum


Misidentification:
wow, how many plants do we have that look like this? Robinia, Tipuana, Gleditsia, Cassia, the list goes on.

Green stems, often for several years. Black bud. Fruit with constrictions between the seeds.

Location
Aptos
448 Sumner Dr.

Santa Cruz
Harvey West Park, behind the children's play area are 2 fairly young trees.

Juglans regia - English Walnut

The English walnut, from the Himalayas', is the commonly eaten walnut. It's a fast growing medium sized deciduous tree, often planted as a shade tree. Mature trees can be up to 60'. They form a rounded to oval canopy. Branching low on the trunk the main laterals are upward arching and massive in size.

Fall color is yellow, can be pretty nice but often not.

Leaves are alternate, pinnately compound, 8-15" long with 5-7 leaflets. The terminal leaflet much larger and broader (usually) than the lateral leaflets. Leaflets are generally oval to oblong, entire or lightly serrated, Leaves are a medium green, shiny. Quite fragrant when crushed.

Stems (and branches) are very stout. Large terminal bud, large three lobed leaf scars, and often accessory buds that develop into flowers. The pith (inside of the young stem) is chambered. 

Here you can see the difference between a flower bud (large) and a vegetative bud (small)

Flowers are green. Arising from a second but above the vegetative bud. 

Fruit is a walnut...... a nut or some botanist consider it to be a dry drupe. The outer portion is the husk, and if you peel it off you will end up with stained hands. Eventually the husk falls off and you are left with a very hard layer. The English walnut shell is quite thin in comparison to others, but still very tough. If you like squirrels its a good tree, man they have sharp and strong teeth.

Here is the black on the left and the English on the right.

Bark is a beautiful smooth gray. Branches are massive, producing fantastic wood for cabinets and paneling. I have read reports out of the east coast where a homeowner goes on vacation and someone removes their walnut trees for the lumber.

Commercially produced walnuts are grafted onto CA black walnut rootstocks. 

Misidentification:

Hard to imagine anything that resembles this.

Location

Santa Cruz

Corner of Evergreen and Coral, you will also see a black walnut 

Elm St at the corner of Cedar St

Jacaranda mimosifolia - Jacaranda

One of the few blue flowered trees that you might encounter, the Jacaranda is a semi-deciduous tree forming a rounded or oval canopy growing quickly to about 30' tall. By semi-deciduous I mean it loses its leaves late in spring for a very short time before growing new foliage. This is a picture of one at Cal Poly SLO at the hort center. They really bloom better inland with heat but ours do okay.

This is on Oceanview in SC, not bad.

The leaves are alternate, bipinnately compound, about 12" long with 13-25 pairs of lateral compound leaflets. There are also about the same number of leaflets. Each leaflet is about 1/2" long. Albizia has similar leaves but shorter. 

Branching is layered with the ends of the branches arching up.

Flowers are blue, 1-2" long, tubular, in 6-12" long terminal clusters in June. Very attractive.

Fruit is pretty cool looking, sort of a flat round pod, about 1 1/2 - 2" in diameter, splitting open to release lots of tiny winged seeds.

Misidentification: Albizia julibrissin has leaves sort of like this, but the Albizia leaves are smaller, the tree is smaller with layered flatted branches and totally different flowers, other than that they look alike, sort of.

Location: 

Santa Cruz, 

Lincoln St at Washington is a nice one.

Oceanview 

Acacia baileyana - Bailey Acacia

Bailey Acacias are small upright ascending trees about 15 - 25' tall. Reasonably thick and somewhat congested. Branching pattern may be pretty random. Beautiful  in bloom. This image was taken at the UCSC Arboretum.

This is the purple foliage form.

The leaves are alternate, bipinnately compound 1-3" long and about as wide, 4-8 pairs of pinnae, generally an even number, each with about 20-40 leaflets about 1/4" long. Interesting little gland at the base of each pair of primary pinnae, roundish with a hole. Leaves are gray green or silvery colored.

Yellow flowers are clustered into small round heads on a long racemes. Very showy and one of the reasons the trees were so very popular in the day. Blooms very early, many years late January or early February, slightly later than A. dealbata.

The fruit are called legumes. These are 2-4" long, 1/2" wide or less and sometimes constricted between the seeds. 

Trunks are smooth, gray color. Nothing to write home about.

'Purpurea' is a cultivar with purple tinged leaves and flower stalks. My opinion of them has soured over the years.
447 9th Ave SC

Misidentification: Most likely A. dealbata, which looks similar, blooms about the same time with the same looking yellow flowers. However, the foliage of A. dealbata is much larger, the lateral leaflets longer. And the tree is taller, and maybe more likely to fall down.

Location:
Soquel
The purple one seen above it located on the corner of Soquel Dr and Crystal Heights,

Santa Cruz
2422 Mission St in the parking lot at the Sunset Inn (Purpurea again)
447 9th Ave

Acacia dealbata - Silver Wattle

The silver wattle is a fast growing medium to large evergreen to about 30-60 feet with wide spreading branches and an overall rounded habit. Often branched to the ground, often multi-stemmed. It seems to like company as it is usually growing in groves like the ones along highway 1 in Aptos. 

This tree was one of the first trees I learned in plant id class years ago at College of San Mateo. As an instructor I know well that it is often just as important to discuss the bad trees as the good ones and of course the common ones. 

Why are these and others so common you ask? Well that's a good question and one that needs more time but, common trees do well, are competitive (weedy) and had some feature that was considered beneficial at one time.

It's really amazing how many of these trees there are here in SC. Early January the flower buds start to swell and by late January the county is alive in yellow trees!

The tree has many redeeming values of course, it is fast growing, it booms very early in the spring, the flowers are very yellow and last a very long time, maybe 30 days or more (in the spring flowers last longer if the weather is cool).

Most of the advantages also make it a weed. I have seen more trees ready to tip over that not. They seem to just "go". They have a short life span, maybe 30 years.

The foliage is an attractive silver blue green colored, alternately arranged on the stems and bi-pinnately compound. This means the leaves are divided into lots of leaflets and each leaflet is divided as well. The leaves are evergreen, 3-5" long. The lateral leaflets (8 to 20 of them) are more or less perpendicular to the main axis of the leaf. The leaflets are very small, numbering 20-40 or so on each side leaflet. The leaves are longer, wider, having more leaflets and point more forward than A. baileyana. The stems are either glaucescent or weakly tomentose and angular in cross section.

Fantastic floral display in January through February. The flowers are a very bright canary yellow, in round clusters arranged in a raceme. About 30-40 or so flowers, each about 1/4" diameter, fragrant. Very showy and one of the reasons the trees were so very popular in the day. Blooms for a very long time. Pollen bothers some people. Blooms best on old wood.

Fruit is a legume, 4-6" long, reddish-brown at maturity, They are brown, thin and twisted. But almost reddish late spring making one think the plant might be blooming again though a different color. Everyone of those seeds will germinate.

Bark is smooth, gray to silver-gray. Lots of bad crotch angles and included bark, making for branches coming down during the winds.

Misidentification:
Only likely A. baileyiana which is a smaller tree, more blue or silver colored and has smaller leaves with fewer lateral compound leaflets, see below.

Location: 

Again, these are everywhere in Santa Cruz except right up at the coast.