Fall Color Creds to the first person who can name these trees, seen at Big Bear and Lake Gregory.
The photos were taken by Alena Nicholas this weekend. Alena describes these as ‘indicator’ trees used to mark when autumn has arrived in these San Bernardino Mountain locations.
0 – 10% – Big Bear and Lake Gregory – indicator trees are showing yellow, red and orange.
Indicator #1 – Eastern Redbud
Indicator #2 – Autumn Blaze Maple
Indicator #3 – Big Leaf Maple
Laura,
It looks like you have identified two out of three. Indicator #2 appears to be Autumn Blaze Maple (acer rubrum freemanii). This specie is native to eastern North America, so it is exotic in California. It has an upright crown (the giveaway), as seen in one of the two photos and a deep red leaf. Indicator #3 is most likely Bigleaf maple (acer macrophyllum), as it appears to be native and the only native maple of similar size is the bigleaf maple. As for Indicator #1, we identified that one immediately. It is not an Eastern Redbud (which would be exotic), but is a common variety found in Southern California. Hint: This is one of three varieties of these types of “popular” trees growing in California.
#1 is… https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Populus_fremontii ?
Colin,
You picked up, correctly, on my reference to popular. The Populus fremontii is named after western explorer John C. Frémont. There are two other similar varieties of “populus” or cottonwood growing in California. Fremontii has an almost triangular leaf with sculpted edges. This tree could be a fremontii or possibly its cousin with a spear-tipped leaf. Like populus fremontii the spear-tip-leafed cottonwood also has bright yellow leaves in fall, though it’s a tree of a different color.