[Arjay Bee]

The leaves don't look like Ficus to me

My thjoughts too - Looks like a tree I used to climb as a kid and locally called a pepper tree. Know nothing more.

[WPRESTO]

Wow...amazing!


One of the naturalized parrot species here (not sure which, Quakers or monks, I think) build huge communal nests. Their favorite construction sites are big utility poles. I don't have an image of one but they are common, I'll try to get one. Friend of mine works for FPL, he told me their crews regularly dismantle the nests as soon as the young have fledged, much as FPL would like to get rid of them sooner, they don't disturb the birds while they have eggs/young nestlings in the nest.

Social weavers will also use man-made "trees." Somewhere I have images of the underside of a light pole that was supporting a big communal nest, again taken through a tour bus window while we were at some kind of checkpoint or entry and were stopped for a while almost under the pole. Consequently only pictures of the underside of the nest, concentrating on the birds that were coming and going. The communal nests can get much larger than those in the images I posted. A GOOGLE search should turn up pictures of some really spectacular examples.

[OrchidJulie]

Social weavers will also use man-made "trees." Somewhere I have images of the underside of a light pole that was supporting a big communal nest, again taken through a tour bus window while we were at some kind of checkpoint or entry and were stopped for a while almost under the pole. Consequently only pictures of the underside of the nest, concentrating on the birds that were coming and going. The communal nests can get much larger than those in the images I posted. A GOOGLE search should turn up pictures of some really spectacular examples.

Incredible. I have seen some utterly huge parrot nests on utility poles. Generally they don't build on the ordinary neighborhood style light poles, they do it on the really big ones with multiple cross members. Better to support the edifice, I imagine. FPL dismantles them, the birds just come back and build them anew. A Google search on "monk parakeet nest" will turn up plenty of images, some of them in trees although I personally have not seen one in a tree. The search I did also seemed to equate monk and Quaker parakeets as the same, but I always thought they were different birds -- quite similar, but not the same. Well, they are both small noisy green parrots who congregate in very large flocks.

[OrchidJulie]

"Spanish" moss...not really moss at all, it's actually a bromeliad, Tillandsia useneoides. Tiny plants with few if any roots, they do actually bloom in the spring, pinhead size yellowish to ivory flowers.

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[WPRESTO]

Weaver nests on a man-made "tree," and a big baobab.

[OrchidJulie]

Weaver nests on a man-made "tree," and a big baobab.

Incredible! Fairchild has a big baobab, but it isn't that big!

Their biggest tree is actually a "Champion", the largest Albizia niopoides (silk tree) in the state. At the time it was measured for the "Champion" designation the canopy was more than 107 ft. wide, the tree was 81 ft. tall. This image, with no scale reference, was taken a few years later, so it's wider and taller now than it was when measured. You can't really sense how big this tree really is, from the photo.

[WPRESTO]

Incredible! Fairchild has a big baobab, but it isn't that big!

Their biggest tree is actually a "Champion", the largest Albizia niopoides (silk tree) in the state. At the time it was measured for the "Champion" designation the canopy was more than 107 ft. wide, the tree was 81 ft. tall. This image, with no scale reference, was taken a few years later, so it's wider and taller now than it was when measured. You can't really sense how big this tree really is, from the photo.

There is one historic tree nearby called "Grayson's Elm" in the adjacent town of Amherst. It's been notable for a long time, might be the largest surviving example of the species and can easily be found on GOOGLE. It's surrounded by other big trees, oaks & maples, making it essentially impossible to photograph anything but the lower part of the trunk.

[OrchidJulie]

There is one historic tree nearby called "Grayson's Elm" in the adjacent town of Amherst. It's been notable for a long time, might be the largest surviving example of the species and can easily be found on GOOGLE. It's surrounded by other big trees, oaks & maples, making it essentially impossible to photograph anything but the lower part of the trunk.

I have several images of this Albizia, it's located in a part of the garden with good, unobstructed views of it, but none of the photos I've taken of it give any real sense of its size, there are never any scale references in the images. The same is true of images of the baobab, in order to get the entire tree in a frame, one has to back up quite a distance from it, again losing any scale reference. I do have an image of the baobab, but it's unprocessed right now, I'll fix it up and post it later. Fairchild has several baobabs in the garden, but one is much, much larger than the others...I have a vague recollection that the big one was planted by Dr. David Fairchild himself, or perhaps in his honor by Col. Montgomery (founder of the garden, named in honor of Dr. Fairchild). Anyway it dates back to the early years of the garden.. Will try to research its history before I post.

[OrchidJulie]

OK, the baobab at Fairchild...planted in 1939. This is the largest of several baobabs in the garden. There are, apparently, several "champion" and "challenger" baobabs in the city of Hollywood, I don't know how they compare to this one. Adansonia digitata.

[paulh]

An old oak in Grapevine TX - the plaque commemorates this tree, which was there during the time of the signing of the Constitution.

[OrchidJulie]

An old oak in Grapevine TX - the plaque commemorates the fact that the tree was there during the time of the signing of the Constitution.

Oh, wow, neat!

Unfortunately, the tree fell victim to hurricane Andrew, but when I was a kid (and in the Girl Scouts) the local Scout council ran a camp ground, in the woods quite near Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden. There was a monster-huge live oak on the camp property, called "the Council Oak", that was estimated to have been growing there when Columbus "discovered" America. There's another tree of the same name on the Seminole reservation.

[noelcmn]

before noelcmn beats me too.

I'm not in the business of beating people, especially when I do not have any pic of a Sociable Weaver nest.

[aaacb]

[KC0PET]

Tree growing in an unlikely place

[WPRESTO]

Tree growing in an unlikely place

Imaging the roots of that tree makes my feet hurt - experiencing what Esmeralda did under questioning in Hunchback