New York: Trees, Etc.

Published 2025-10-29

By Christopher Howard

As mentioned previously, we took a two week trip to New York to visit our friends who live in Goshen, which is a city in New York about two hours drive from New York City. Goshen is a beautiful place, with a small-town feel to it. Visiting Goshen and some nearby farms was enjoyable. We got to pick apples at an apple farm — pay per pound — which was a lot of fun, and we got to visit a maple farm as well.

New York trees

While in town, our friends allowed me to use their library card to check out several books to help me identify the local trees. This included the 1988 "Eastern Trees" field guide by Petrides and Wehr; "Trees of New York" by Tekiela (2006); and also some National Audubon Society field guide.

I didn't have quite as much opportunity as I would have liked just to study trees, but I had two fruitful tree-studying sessions at the local park. Here are a few identifications I made:

Norway spruce. It is similar to our white spruce, but all the branchlets hang straight down from the branches. also, the cones were enormous, around 6 inches long. The base of the tree was about 2 ft dia at the base.

Red Maple. Three lobes, pointed, sometimes with two small lobes at the base of the leaf, saw-toothed. Five main leaf veins. Leaves turning yellow and red. Bark gray, smooth toward the top, fissured and scaly toward the bottom. Base about 1.25 ft dia. Est. about 50 ft tall.

Oak tree, likely Burr Oak. Photo of bark in guide was similar — deeply furrowed w/ long, flakey, narrow scales. Smooth leaf lobes more deeply divided on lower half of leaf. Top leaf green turning yellow and brown; bottom white-green. No hairs on the bottom of the leaf, per description, but it did feel more smooth. Acorns on the ground were about 1 inch long with a deep cup that covered about half the inner part, with a pointy or fringe-like border. My friends told me that Burr Oak acorns are bigger than that, but I think maybe I just had a younger tree.

Oak tree, likely Eastern Black Oak, based on similar leaf shape and bristle tips. Bark grey, rough, bumpy, and lightly furrowed. About 2 ft dia at base and very tall.

Several trees appeared to be flowering dogwood, based on the vivid red leaves, the shape of the leaves, and the scaly, plate-like bark. One tree about 10" dia at base and about 20 ft tall.

Eastern white pine. Clustered thin but long needles. Cones on the ground about 5 inches long with white tips at end of each scale. Bark reddish brown, furrowed, and scaly/flaky toward the base. About 1.5 ft dia at base. Very tall tree.

Found a white spruce, same as back in Fairbanks.

Found one enormously tall and thick tree, about 3.5 ft dia at the base with the main branches about 2 ft diameter. Bark gray (brown beneath) split by deep furrows. The leaves each had four wide lobes, two on each side, slightly pointy at the end. At first I supposed it was a maple, but I believe it is a Tuliptree (Lirodendron tulipifera, a magnolia).

A small tree about 15 ft tall and 3 inch dia at base, apparently a Black Locust, based on the look of the compound alternate leaves.

Found a birch, similar to a paper birch, but with many layer of bark that were only half pealed off — four or five layers deep in some places. The bark color was more reddish that the white bark I am used to seeing on our paper birch.

Also observed a Cypress tree along Orange road, but didn't have the time to study it.

Most of these trees were new to me. I am familiar with spruce, but had never seen a Norway spruce. Of course I new what a maple leaf looked like in pictures, but these were the first trees I had seen in person. I had heard of Oak trees before, but had never seen one, and previously had no idea what they looked like, and this is the first time I had seen an acorn outside of pictures or decorations. The Tuliptree was quite impressive, and the vivid red of the flowering dogwood is something I don't see much of in Fairbanks. Some of the small willow trees turn red, but generally in Fairbanks our fall landscapes are only green and yellow.

New York City, My Rant

We got several good tours of New York City, including a trip up the Empire State Building, the natural history museum, and walking around long stretches of Manhattan. I am grateful for the tours, but I have to be honest and admit that I hate New York City. The list of things I despise about it:

Very family unfriendly. Public restrooms are disgusting and hard to find. One time, one of my kids had to hold it in for about 30 minutes, until we finally found a bathroom building in Battery park, only to discover that it was closed. A very crude BPA employee cussed out my son for trying to go in. We proceeded to try the bathroom on the other side of the park only to discover it was closed as well.

The public transportation is dirty, smelly, overcrowded, and dangerous. We only went on the subway twice, but we managed to get a car with some nasty guy who was talking dirty and going on for a while about crack cocaine. You get about 30 seconds to get on or off the cars, which is a challenging affair when pushing a stroller. I can understand why a lot of people would be forced to ride the subway, but I can't understand why anyone would want to ride it. As a side note, some of the elevators had large pee stains in the corners, which was gross.

Most of New York City is ugly and dirty, in my subjective opinion. Of course there are a few fancy looking buildings. But most of the high-rises and streets are nasty. I'm told people pay massive rents to live in the tiny rat hole apartments that are everywhere.

Micah begged for us to buy some hot dogs from a street vendor, and I was quite disappointed with the experience. I tried to pick one of the nicer looking stands, but I apparently made a bad choice. I ended up paying about $40 dollars for a few hot dogs and a small pack of mozz sticks. Even with high Fairbanks prices, back home that would have bought me two whole meals at a decent restaurant. The thin, barely cooked hot dogs, and the insubstantial buns looked exactly like the cheapest brand that I might buy at the local grocery store.

We did go to a fancy mall, full of very expensive clothing and jewelry stores. Nothing likely I will ever be able to remotely afford in my life time. Each store was ominously guarded by a large, intimidating man in a very fancy suit, obviously placed there to discourage commoners like myself from entering.

Not a moral place. Lots of men pretending to be women. On the ferry, one young guy was blasting our really dirty music - something about b**tches and the f* this and that - on his portable speaker, right next to my kids.

On the positive side, the Empire State building was interesting, with a big view of course, and an interesting museum. Very expensive at $50/head. Unfortunately, we didn't realize that you are allowed to spend as long as you want in the museum before going up the elevator, and that you can't go back to the museum afterwards. It housed a lot of screens displaying old black and white video footage, as well as a neat display showing the original electro-mechanical relays that drove the elevators. The relays were set up to opening, close, and spark, like they would have in the original system.

The Natural History Museum had some interesting exhibits, but they pushed the evolutionary dogma — biological and cosmic — very hard. It got exhausting trying to explain, at practically every other station, the difference between what the Bible teaches, and the evolutionary fairy tale.

I think we originally had plans to visit the Air and Space museum, but in the end we did not manage to fit it in.

I did appreciate getting to see the Manhattan city lights at night — as we were driving away. The colorful lights, silhouetted against the dark sky, is something that is mesmerizing in pixel art, but that I had never seen in person. Looking at the big waves on the Hudson river was also mesmerising.

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