I see these trees from the freeway on my way to work and I want to know what kind of trees they are. I have been to numerous tree sites but have yet to see a picture of them.
They run in 60-70 ft range. They look like pine. They have the evergreen-type needles. But the branches and needles not point up, but fan out and the groups of needles seem to sag. A cross between a tall pine and weeping willow, if you will. For some reason, I associate these trees with swamps. That is, if showed me pictures of swamps, I would expect to see these types of trees. But I could be completely off base there.
If you are from southern California, these tress are along the 210 freeway in Arcadia, near the Santa Anita racetrack exit. They line the freeway for a mile or 2.
As a shot in the dark, how about a longleaf pine (.pdf doc)? If not, you can try checking out the most common North American pines here, and see if any of those fit.
If the tops of the trees are saggy, I would say they are larches. But they don’t have really long needles. (Long enough to tell from the road that they fan out, that is.)
Do deciduous trees in Southern California lose their leaves in autumn? I’m in Northern Illinois. The reason I ask is that we have some trees that sound like what you describe, but they are “false evergreens” - they look like droopy pines, but they lose their needles in the autumn. I believe the official name of these trees is tamarack (I think that’s the right spelling.)
Might it be a mayten tree? Keep in mind that I’m searching blind, and that though botanically inclined, I am in the Southeast US and am totally unfamiliar with the flora of California.
Perhaps an Abies sp.? They grow in an amazing variety of branch/needles forms. Reading the word swamps made me think of trees that looked like the second photo on this Italian site.
Two Abies concolor are shown here. This tree has the more familiar conical shape when young, the drooping branches becoming more apparent as the tree grows. Cultivated varieties grow to 60-80’.
Well, yeah, I know THAT, but I also know that some plants that are considered annuals in the north are perennials in the south. In gardening catalogues I have seen the description “evergreen in zones 8-9”. And if you’re gonna nitpick, evergreens do lose their leaves, just not all at once like deciduous trees. So there
Larches and tamaracks are the same thing, huh? Neat.
Any chance you could gather some leaves from the trees (I know you mentioned you see them from the freeway, but not whether they were accessible)? That would allow for a fairly definitive ID if you could.
