In the older part of the town of Springdale, most of the street names are named after a type of tree (likely due to its presence in the surrounding). I have decided to make a catalogue of these street names with photos of what the tree looks like.
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| The red shrubs are probably blueberry bushes that have turned red with the season. |
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| Road side photos biking to Little Bay. |
Forest St - this street is at the centre of town. All the other "tree" streets, Cherry Cr., Aspen Ln, etc surround Forest St.
**I regret to say that the photos in the links for the trees do not belong to me, but maybe after this post, I will have acquired more skills in identifying trees and will be able to showcase my own photos next time.**
Ash
Aspen Aspen is the tree I always confuse with birch, because they both have smooth white trunks, medium size rounded leaves with teeth, and in the fall, the leaves both change from green to yellow. The only thing I can use to differentiate the two is that birch bark is paper thin and peels off horizontally readily.
Birch
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Little Bay
I can't tell from this photo if the trees with yellow leaves are birch or aspen.
So much for my newly acquired skills in distinguishing them. |
Cedar I've been told there is no cedar indigenous to the Newfoundland island, so what ever cedar you may
find there are grown for decorative purposes. This makes me wonder why Springdale with have a street named after a tree that is not likely to be found in that town...
Cherry
Dogberry I now know the name to these pretty red berries! I think I have a
photo of dogberries from an older post.
Elm
Fir I learned a try in distinguishing between fir and spruce trees. Fir starts with "f" which is also the first letter of flat, which is its distinctive trait where needles stick out on a flat plane from the branches. The needles on a spruce stick out from a branch in planes of all 360 degrees and thus the needles are all aROUND the branch and not flat.
Hemlock
Juniper The scale like needles are similar to cedar, but these ones are thicker and rounder.
Maple There are maples where I lived, but what I missed most this autumn were the vibrant red maples of southern Ontario and Quebec.
Larch There's also
tamarack larch commonly just called tamarack which is really common in Newfoundland and in the northern territories. I was initially very confused by the tamarack, because being a coniferous, I was expecting it to be green like all the other needle and cone-bearing evergreens I was familiar with. What I saw instead this fall was that the needles of these coniferous trees were turning yellow. It turns out I was deceived by the cones and needles and in fact tamaracks are coniferous and deciduous and thus turn yellow and fall off in autumn. Tamarack is the Algonquin word for "wood used for showshoe", because the wood is tough but flexible.
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| Very short tamaracks in the distance. |
Mulberry
Oak Oak trees remind me of one time when I was at Moorelands camp in Ontario and we were set to work on building the layout for this maze in a field, except, it was difficult to find a clearing to lay the material down since the field was scattered with acorns, the seeds of oak trees. I had wondered where all the lazy squirrels had gone, because there was a whole field of acorns to be harvested (not to mention that is was fall and they should really be stocking up for the winter). I then wondered, why don't humans harvest acorns... We eat all sorts of nuts, so why not acorns. I then proceeded to crack open an acorn to try for myself. It turned out, the nut was bitter in taste. Satisfied by my discovery I discontinued my degustation. It turns out Native Americans in fact do eat acorns. They first boil it in water to leach out the mildly poisonous substance which gives the acorn the bitter taste, then they grind up the nut to produce a meal/ flour for cooking.
Pine
Poplar
Redwood
Spruce
Sycamore
Walnut
Willow
