Tall Tree Discovery Sparks A Mystery

Frank Cochran looked up from clearing rose vines near the base of a large tree — and saw what looked like a California redwood.

An old one. Standing in Edgewood Park. In New Haven.

Could it be?

Then Cochran discovered a second, similar tree up the road that cuts through the park.

Cochran, a volunteer who helps tend the park, began looking for clues to how the tree got there, and when. Redwoods grow in California, not New Haven. Might someone have brought seeds back to New Haven a century ago, and found just the right spot for them to grow?

The discovery of the trees is a bonus for the ​“Green Team,” a group of volunteers that meets every Tuesday morning, even during the winter and on rainy days, to clean and clear the park.

Cochran founded the team eight years ago. The retired lawyer wanted to do more for his neighborhood than pick up trash. The team consisted mostly of himself and a friend until his wife, Stephanie Fitzgerald, took over and created a set meeting time and list of interested neighbors.

Now, a core group of four retirees, a freelance writer and a few other volunteers meet on Tuesdays at 10 a.m. to take care of the park for a few hours. This Tuesday, they were clearing vines to make a walking path by the river near the Edgewood Skate Park. Cocharn said that the city has an unusually high greenspace-to-people ratio; he compared New Haven to Chicago, which only has around four times more park space but over 20 times more people. So park rangers and maintenance crews need the help, and Edgewood, Westville and West River neighbors have stepped in to provide it.

The work can offer them a new perspective on their park — and discoveries like the mystery trees.

Invaders!

The Green Team has, as the name might imply, an environmental mission — one that requires understanding the difference between invasive and non-invasive non-native plants.

“One of the things cities can do is produce a lot more of anything green. Trees are the best,” Cochran said, pointing to a tree that he estimated had absorbed 20 tons of carbon, or the amount of carbon emitted from one car driving 2,400 miles.

The Green Team’s contribution to this process is protecting trees from vines. Cochran sees trees come down every year; the culprit is often vines strangling old trees or preventing new ones from growing.

The team cuts the vines at the root and allows the rest to fall eventually. Yale’s Urban Resources Initiative (URI) leads a similar volunteering program in other parks.

Not all of the vines are invasive. But some of them are, including Japanese Knotweed and oriental bittersweet. The bittersweet vine was originally introduced in the park as a form of erosion control but now has blocked the view of the river.

The two mystery trees Cochran discovered also aren’t native — but they are welcome.

Intentional Plant?

Cochran discovered the second tree a week or so after the first. He was reading The Man Who Planted Trees by Jim Robbins, a book about a nurseryman in Michigan and his quest to clone large trees to save the planet from air and water pollution. Giant redwoods and sequoias, which are related to redwoods, were key characters in the book.

When he found the second tree, he wondered if New Haven might be a good climate for redwoods.

Cochran consulted a tree identification book by David Allen Sibley first. Then he talked to a city landscape architect, who he said did not know. He asked other members of the Green Team, but none of them were tree experts either.

Cochran figured that someone planted the trees intentionally. Thanks to Fitzgerald’s research, he knew that many plantings near the trees happened in the period between 1910 and 1925. He had heard about a century-old redwood further up the West River from a neighbor whose predecessor had brought it over as a seedling from California.

The tallest of the mystery trees grows across the path from the Edgewood Skate Park. It has reddish-brown bark, pine needles and deep grooves in the trunk. Another, similar tree grows near the Edgewood Avenue bridge. They are both around 60 to 80 feet tall.

Neither has reproduced. There are no small trees of the same variety nearby.

Cochran sees no threat in the non-native growth. ​“We’re not extreme nativists,” he said ​“as long as they don’t squeeze out other forms of life.”

Farther Flung

Tree experts from URI got on the case this week. They concluded the trees originally came not from California but from Japan.

After analyzing several photos, URI identified the trees on Tuesday as most likely to be Sawara cypresses, or Chamaecyparis pisifera . Landscape designers often used the Japan-originating Sawara cypresses in the early and mid-1900s, but they are now uncommon in nurseries, according to URI.

“While these are unfortunately not redwoods, they’re special trees nonetheless!” URI staff member Matthew Viens wrote in an email message.

Unlike in redwoods, the wood underneath the Sawara cypress’s bark is white, not red. While not as massive or prehistoric as redwoods, Sawara cypresses can reach 150 feet tall and live over 300 years.

The bark and foliage were clues for the institute’s associate director Chris Ozyck, who got on the case. His knowledge of New Haven’s park history helped, too.

Ozyck knew that the sons of Central Park landscape architect Frederick Law Olmstead designed Edgewood Park. They included a variety of native, invasive and ​“exotic ornamentals” in that design. This last category means non-native plants that do not outcompete native species, Ozyck explained.

“Most of the pretty plants that people like are from other countries, namely China and Korea,” Ozyck said.

Examples are flowering cherry trees, Japanese maples and the prettier varieties of azaleas, Ozyck said. The less colorful native varieties are important to the wildlife that evolved alongside them, he explained.

Ozyck guessed that the Sawara cypresses were part of a ​“tapestry” of many different evergreen trees when they were planted, as still exists in the Caroline Black Garden in New London, and that the others have since died.

Edgewood’s Sawara cypresses could live for another 100 years, according to Ozyck — especially with the protection of groups like the Green Team.

When Cochran heard about the new identification, he was not entirely convinced. He said he thinks that the trees could still be sequoias, which are in the redwood family, or a hybrid of multiple species.

“It’s gotten me to thinking that evergreens in general we should be emphasizing more. They seem to do well and they grow a little faster that some of the other hardwoods and the oaks. They make a nice contrast,” he said. ​“Anyway, they’re really nice trees, don’t you think?”