4/17/2024 0 Comments Northern ca types of maple treesI expect that some of the other deeper, shadier canyons held privately and off limits to the walking public on the north side of Big Rock Ridge also host some maples and redwoods. And as far as I have ascertained at this point, there is a single good-sized tree in Indian Valley Open Space on the Witzel Trail, though you’d think that tree might have some cousins or nephews somewhere in the vicinity. There are also several more scattered fine trees in the lower portions of Indian Tree Open Space Preserve as you ascend from the shady creekside redwood grove on the Deer Camp Trail. They line an early section of the creek, and even if you visit in the leafless midwinter waterfall season, you can still recognize them by their opposite twig pattern, thinly striated gray bark, lingering two-winged samaras, and by the classic maple leaves littering the ground. Our best public patch of big-leafs is found at Ignacio Valley Open Space Preserve, on the short Buck Gulch Waterfall Trail at the end of Fairway Dr. Here in Novato, however, it’s mostly too hot and our waterways too dry to support a robust maple population. Marin County as a whole has plenty of fine maples along creeks at Point Reyes or Mount Tam, where the water is reliable and the shade is significant. This is a truly fine tree – both the biggest-leafed and tallest maple in North America – that richly deserves a lengthy encomium, which I will pen sometime in September or so when their lovely leaves turn to gold and drift down in the cool breeze of autumnal twilight. This species, our only real maple tree, is unmistakable, with classic maple-shaped leaves that are deeply and geometrically lobed in a palmate pattern and seeds that are borne in two-winged, helicoptering samaras. But first, let’s take a look at the four trees below that have only a limited local presence and are always found near water. Sunny but damp areas including creeksides, edges of freshwater ponds, and roadside ditches often host willows, who will get a full length treatment someday. Many of the smaller creeks running through our public lands are bordered by our generalists who can survive our dry summers: bays, buckeyes, and live oaks. The following trees belong to a habitat known as riparian ( ripa = Latin for riverbank), a habitat with which we are not overly blessed due to the combined forces of climate and topography (we have relatively few watercourses with year-round waterflow) and urbanization (we have built or paved over a good chunk of Novato Creek, as well as our more minor streams, and private property limits easy access to much of the remainder). In an follow-up Minor Trees Part II, I cover a few smaller tree species that are just too little to get the full-scale treatment, as well as other notable native shrubs. Today, I’ll cover the riparian, or streamside, trees of Novato and Northeast Marin – a group of species that have a relatively light presence in our area due to our scarcity of watercourses that both run year-round and survive in undisturbed natural form. But we have some trees that on account of their limited local presence or modest proportions just don’t seem to demand so many words of me right now. I’ve been dealing with many of our more notable trees singly and in what some might call excessive depth (did I really need to discuss French fables, Classical Greek sculpture, and Japanese animation to express my deep interest in the valley oak? Well, yes, of course I did).
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