Photo Credit: Roving Rube. Viewpoint: Central Park looking east towards the Mall.; 2/28/02 12:28 PM.
Notes (Roving Rube): Central Park contains one of the largest stands of American Elms left on the continent.
"It is a struggle, but the park's arboriculturalists -- with constant inspections, fungicide injections, pruning of infected limbs, and removal of terminally sick trees -- have managed to keep losses down to roughly one percent a year. When a tree is removed, a young elm is planted in its place." (Barnes & Noble Complete Illustrated Map and Guidebook To Central Park -- an indeed complete and yet still portable 127 pg. must-have!)
During his earlier career as a park ranger, the Rube had despaired of ever being able to tell one tree from another (a park ranger is like a forest ranger without the forestry degree, or in the Rube's case, any knowledge of natural science whatsoever). However, just like he does now with skyscrapers in NYC, armed with guidebooks and a lot of walking and looking, he learned to go by a combination of the leaves, fruit, flowers (yes, all trees have flowers), bark and habit.
In some cases just seeing one of these items is enough to know the tree. "Habit" is the characteristic way in which a tree grows, from the dominance of its central trunk, to the angle at which the branches are carried, to the density of the twigs.
American Elms are known for their "vase shape", and we see them in the center area of this picture (). To the Rube that means it looks like all their branches are stuck into their trunk as if it were a vase. The main trunk splits apart early on into many medium-sized branches, and you can't say which is the "main" one, unlike the threes trees closer to the foreground on left and right, which are more centrally dominant (plus their bark is different!).
shows the Mall itself, lined by the Elms. There are some dark paving stones set just beyond the compass ()-- these are in honor of some of Central Park's many Friends who help keep it looking so nice.