Trees

This tree is a grafted clone of the original Basswood which has been growing in Brookings Quad for more than 100 years.

This tree has dark green leaves which turn bronze in the fall. Its flowers are yellowish-green, and the female flowers yield edible beechnuts which ripen in the fall.

The American Chestnut is a historically and cuturally important tree that unfortunately has a sad story. This species used to be one of the biggest and most numerous trees in the Eastern United States, but it is now functionally extinct.

The American Elm is native to much of Eastern North America and grows in low, moist areas and along streams across the state of Missouri.

Native to much of the continental U.S., the American Hop Hornbeam is a great tree. It has orangish-brown, loose bark and catkins that stay on over winter making it an interesting and beautiful tree year-round.

The American Smoketree is a Missouri native tree with fabulous color in the spring and summer, thanks to its smoke-like purple-haired inflorescences.

The Sycamore is regarded as one of the largest trees native to eastern North America, and was historically prized by Native Americans for the construction of dugout canoes. Ecologically, they are early colonizers to newly available habitat, and support animal shelters as they mature.

The American Witchhazel is one of the few deciduous woody plants that flowers after the leaves fall. It typically flowers during October to December.

The Amur Cork Tree is native to China and Japan. The species is able to tolerate some drought conditions and urban pollutants. They are known for attractive, furrowed bark that resembles cork, as is apparent within its name.

The Arizona Sycamore is one of three native sycamore species in North America, and is the species with the most limited range.

This tree is native to wetlands and swamps in the Midwest but is adaptable to urban conditions. Its needlelike foliage turns russet red and drops in the fall.

The Bald Cypress is the state tree of Louisiana. Despite its resemblance to a needled evergreen tree in the summer, it is actually deciduous. The 'Mickelson' is a cultivar of the Bald Cypress, and has a narrower shape and denser foliage than the native species.

This fruit tree derives its name from its restricted habitat in sandy areas like beaches, dunes, and tidal streams.

This oak is a spontaneously occurring hybrid of the White Oak (Quercus alba) and the Bur Oak (Q. macrocarpa).

This aspen is found in the northeastern United States and southeastern Canada, and has distinctly egg-shaped leaves with blunt, narrow teeth and flattened petioles.

The Black Gum, also called Tupelo, is a Missouri native and flexible mid-western species capable of growing in both standing water and rocky slopes.

Alternatively described as a closely related species of Sugar Maple (Acer saccharum) or as its subspecies, the Black Maple overlaps in range with the Sugar Maple but shifted farther west into the Midwestern Plains.

Boxelder Maple is notable because of the usual leaves this species has compared to all other native maples. Instead of the normal simple leaf, it instead has compound leaves, which means it has leaflets.

This tree is in the Fagaceae family and is native to Missouri. It is a deciduous tree with broad and rounded crown, which is good for shading. The leaves are leathery, dark green and turn to yellow-brown in fall. The oval acorns are large in size with fringed cups.

Although this tree has a broad range within the Upper Midwest and Northeast United States, it is uncommon in most of its range, being overshadowed by its ubiquitous relative Juglans nigra, the black walnut. Its lack of prominence is mainly caused by the deadly butternut canker, which only affects J. cinerea.

Even though it is called a buckthorn, Carolina Buckthorn has no spines. The shrub is well known for its bright red drupes during the summer. The fruit eventually mature to black and attracts many wildlife species, especially birds.

The best place to find this plant in the wild is the Great Smokey Mountains where they thrive. Squirrels love the four-winged, dry fruit, and Tennessee beekeepers describe it as a great honey tree. The wood is also sometimes used for cabinets, veneer, and carvings.

The Cedar Elm is a drought-tolerant, medium-sized elm native to Texas and the Lower Mississippi River region.

The Chestnut Oak has a native range just bordering but not within Missouri; it thrives in dry uplands from southern Maine to the Mississippi but primarily in the Appalachian Mountains.

The Chinese Fringetree is a small tree with distinctive long white-petalled flowers and olive-like fruit, very similar to our native Fringetree.

The Chinese Redbud is within the same genus as the Eastern Redbud, but features larger, bright magenta flowers and glossy heart-shaped leaves.

The Chitalpa is an inter-generic hybrid of two species (Chilopsis linearis and Catalpa bignonoides) from the Bignoniaceae family.

The wild Chokecherry is usually found in dense thickets due to its vast root system which can sprout runners, but on campus you will find them managed to prevent this. It blooms beautiful white flowers that eventually turn into dark purple fruit.

The Compton Hybrid Oak is a natural hybrid between the Southern Live Oak and the Overcup Oak and can be found in the areas with overlapping distributions of the two parent species.

A beautiful non-native from Europe and Asia, this tree shows off its gorgeous star-shaped, yellow flowers in early spring before its leaves emerge.

This tree is in the Magnoliaceae family and is native to Missouri. The cucumber tree is named by its cucumber-like fruit. The fruit is 2" to 3" long, slightly curved, and cylindrical, and to add to the cucumber appearance, the immature fruit is also green.

This tree species is originally native to the Himalayas range, but due to its high tolerance to heat for a true cedar, it is able to grow in certain specific conditions in the United States such as the St. Louis area.

This tree has many interesting features including late summer flowers, juicy black drupes, gigantic compound leaves, and sharp prickles covering many parts of the plant.