Our most recent tree story comes from Chadwick Arboretum’s horticulturist, Pam Poeth. Read about Pam’s favorite tree on campus, the striped maple, below:
I attended OSU from 1980-1985 and received my Bachelors degree in Ornamental Horticulture. I had not been back to OSU for 30 years until I was hired to work in a position as a horticulturist for the arboretum in 2019. After walking around the arboretum for the first time in 30 years, I recognized in the arboretum one of my favorite trees. I was pleasantly surprised by how well it was doing and it took me back to a time where I was standing with my classmates in front of this tree during the regular plant ID walks in my class with Dr. Stephen Still in 1984.
It is located in the Lane Ave. site northwest of the Ag Admin building. This tree is a Striped Maple (Acer pennsylvanicum). At the time, I learned that it was a beautiful understory tree with green and white stripes on the trunk and was not utilized very much or grown in commercial nurseries. This was the case because of its slow growth and difficulty in propagating from seed. It is native to North America.
At this time, the tree was a tiny whip about an inch in caliper and about 5’ in height and now it is about 20’ and 5-6” caliper. I found out that it is currently listed as an endangered species and is still not well known as a tree or produced in commercial nurseries. It does prefer an acid soil but seems to be doing well in our arboretum site in which soils tend to be alkaline. This makes me wonder if it could do well in our area despite the challenges with soil pH. Here is some information on this tree; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acer_pensylvanicum.
If you are interested in visiting the striped maple mentioned above, explore Chadwick Arboretum’s Lane Avenue Gardens north of the Agricultural Administration building.