As part of our ambition to help HRM citizens connect with their trees, we are featuring a tree species per week in this 2020 blog. The species have been chosen to represent the most abundant species in the streets of the Centre-Plan area (i.e., Halifax Peninsula plus Dartmouth inside the Circumferential) - some of these we know from our inventory studies, others from the records of recent plantings under the HRM Urban Forest Master Plan.
Once you have read a species entry here, we encourage you to ask questions and put them to us at our email address: halifaxtreeproject@gmail.com. If you have ideas as to what additional information about each species you would find useful for us to include, by all means let us know.
Regarding sources of information, our group at Halifax Tree Project has, collectively, a considerable store of knowledge accumulated through reading, researching, writing, observing, and discussing. Online you can find vast amounts of information about each of the species we cover. We use a standard reference text called “Trees in Canada” by John Laird Farrar - the latest edition is 2017. It is available for purchase online for about $60. If you don’t yet own any tree-identification books but wish you did, we strongly encourage you to start with Farrar’s book. Let’s start!
Note: sometimes the easiest way for us to guide you to interesting examples of street-tree species is using civic addresses. Please respect home-owner privacy if you venture past their premises to observe the trees we point out.
