J.B. MacKinnon’s Vancouver Tree Tour

Big, old and much-loved trees are vanishing in Vancouver. The city is still home to many, many wonderful trees, though, and celebrating them is their best defence.

After I wrote “They Cut Down ‘Grandpapa’” — published yesterday in these pages — The Tyee team asked what trees in the city stood out to me as I talked to urban foresters and searched for special examples. I came up with a dozen — a list you can tick, or tour in a day.

These are trees with some combination of history, character, old age or sweeping size, and they’re all on public land. Most have been recognized by urban forest fans for decades.

This list, with illustrations of the actual trees by Nora Kelly, is meant to be only a beginning. The greatest threat to Vancouver’s trees is that we don’t know which ones are treasured, who treasures them and why. This is where you come in.

Do you have a favourite city tree, tree-lined street or grove? Let us know (1) about the tree, (2) where it is and (3) why the tree matters — to you, your people, your neighbourhood or even to urban wildlife. Photos welcome! Or maybe a beloved tree has recently been cut down in your neighbourhood? Tell us at editor[at]thetyee.ca and put the words “favourite tree” in the subject line.

In the meantime, here’s my list including co-ordinates — and a map with precisely set pins — to make it easy to find all 12 sites.

1. ‘Somei-yoshino’ cherries (illustrated at the top of this story): These four grizzled survivors are among the very few remaining specimens from a 1935 donation of 1,000 saplings by the Uyeda family, who were forcibly removed from Vancouver during the Second World War Japanese Canadian internment.

The trees’ blossoms are now scanty, but long marked spring’s arrival for North Shore commuters. They stand near the Georgia Street entrance to Stanley Park just to the west of Stanley Park Drive and south of the roundabout connecting Stanley Park Drive to Pipeline Road.

2. Caucasian wingnut, Comox Street at Chilco Street: Some would call it undercounting, but Vancouver Park Board data shows just eight such wingnuts in the city. This is the greatest among them, with long, pendulous flowers in spring.

3. Red oak, Alexandra Park: Vancouver’s stoutest, most Lord of the Rings oak was likely planted in the first decade of the 1900s, making it well over a century old.

4. Dutch elms: Celebrated turn-of-the-20th-century lifeguard Serafim “Joe” Fortes knew this grove; he lived in a cottage here. A plaque honours George Wainborn, Vancouver’s longest-serving park commissioner. The copse, which has been lit up at Christmas since the ’90s, overlooks the Inukshuk monument at English Bay and waves across Beach Avenue at the red oak of Alexandra Park.

5. Douglas fir, Laurel Street between Seventh and Eighth Avenues: My favourite tree in the city stands in the middle of an alley — a supersized version of a flower coming up through a crack in the concrete. What is its story? If anyone knows, I’m all ears.

6. ‘Ojochin’ cherry at the Japanese Canadian War Memorial, Stanley Park: Donated by visiting Japanese mayors, this white-blossomed tree has kept watch over the monument since 1925. The trunk is now held together by an industrial-size screw.

7. Giant sequoia, loop road, Queen Elizabeth Park: Landmark sequoias dot the city, most notably on the nearby Cambie Heritage Boulevard, but a friend correctly assured me there’s something special about this hidden one, still young at 70-something years old.

8. Pyramidal European hornbeams, Dumfries Street from 47th to 49th Avenue: Another friend recommended this cathedral-like street of inverted-triangle trees. Sharp-shinned hawks were nesting here when I visited.

9. Tree of heaven, McAuley Park, Fraser Street at Kingsway: A balm to weary Kingsway commuters, this tree pretty much is McAuley Park, which is also home to a monument to the 50,000 Vietnamese “boat people” who settled in Canada in 1979-80, many in the Little Saigon neighbourhood.

10. Bigleaf maple, Victory Square: Walk southeast down Pender Street along Victory Square. The first tree you come to on your left beside the sidewalk just might be the last of a row planted in 1897. If so, at 129 years, it’s the city’s oldest known street tree.

11. Common catalpa, Jericho Beach Park: Huge leaves; a weird, stretched-out limb hung with a bespoke sign reading “DO NOT SIT OR SWING ON THE BRANCH”; a trunk that looks like it will open an eye at any moment — what’s not to like?

12. Weeping willows, east end of Jericho Pond: A much-loved willow, hanging its withies (yes, that’s the word for those hanging strands) over the water, has gone from leaning to toppled — but lives on and still looks wonderful. Other shady, glady willows add to this spot’s appeal.

For an interactive map of where to find the above trees around Vancouver, click here.