Just for fun! What's your favorite tree species?

Just for fun! What's your favorite tree species? And why?

ye gods. i couldn’t possibly. i don’t think i’d have an easy time of figuring out my top ten.

For me the top three are easy,
1)Mesquite, which is native to the region I live in--I understand they can be problems elsewhere. I love them because they have wonderful shade and leaf out and get really green, exactly at our hottest-dryest time of year---when everything else in sight is brown and dry--the mesquite trees are bright green.

2)Jacaranda--Not native to where I live and I have seen that they can be a problem in the out in the countryside--but they make nice urban trees here in Mexico. Absolutely beautiful in bloom grow tall producing shade, and the sidewalks around them don't seem to be lifted like they are around a lot of other urban trees in Mexico. So I like them as CITY trees.

3) Montezuma Cypress OMG this tree is what I want to be in my next life--they are one of the most majestic beings on this earth.

I think three is a good number:

All because they are pretty:

Vitex
Crape Myrtle
Mimosa

Mimosa is a nitrogen-fixing tree because it is a legume.

I've always been rather fond of beech trees. They're apparently not native to the UK, but have naturalised and make characteristic woodlands in the area where I used to live. Beautiful smooth trucks with translucent leaves that catch the light. They are often rather contorted shapes due to former woodland management practices.


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I'm trying now to think of a tree I don't like ;)

Nancy Reading wrote:
I'm trying now to think of a tree I don't like ;)

Tree of Heaven springs to mind.  I can't come up with a single favorite tree, but my least favorite is easy.

California Redwood, because I haven’t seen a Sequoia, yet!  Locally, it might be mulberry.  Fruit, fodder, and fuel without much waiting!

Mulberry is way up on my list.  I just planted attempt 7 and 8 at least.  I try to grow one most years and fail, so now I'm throwing out the rule book and making another attempt at the worst time of the year.  We're well into a drought and will regularly be over 100 degrees until at least September.

My absolute favorite despite not being the best food crop and playing havoc with my allergies every spring is the live oak.  I grew up around them and there is no better climbing tree for a child as the natural curve isn't a straight up and down pole.  That natural curve in the oldest leads the branches back down creating a private sheltered cave. The branches are stong enough to support all kinds of swings and hammocks unlike my pecan tree. They dump huge masses of heavy leaves that don't blow away as easily as most during the exact time people are looking to apply mulch in the spring.  I am not as found of the several inch thick layer of spent flowers that they drop in the same season. It's probably fantastic for anything without allergies though.

Anne, mimosas were my father's favorite. We had several in the front yard growing up so I saw first hand how short lived they were. Somehow I never realized they were nitrogen fixers.  Now I am wondering if I should use them as nurse trees.

Cassie, you've reminded me of an old childhood favorite. The weeping willow. My neighbors had a huge one and it was a great climbing tree or playing in the shade under the canopy, and playing with the flexible whips you could pull off. I remember an adult complaining about it being a lot of work to have a weeping willow tree and since they don't grow in the climate I've lived all my adult life in I don't actually know. But all the neighborhood kids sure loved that tree.

Pinyon Pine

I am drawn to birch trees, they are unique and so very different from other trees that grow around here. The wood is useful and pretty to look at, there are multiple varieties of fungus that grow exclusively on birch one of which is chaga that I enjoy picking and consuming.

Pecan is my favorite. It makes delicious nuts, is a great shade tree, and the wood is great for smoking meat.

Probably Japanese Maples, they have a beautiful, useful wood and the foliage is stunning year round, but especially in the fall.

I'll narrow this down to trees I have growing around me and say Tulip Poplar. So tall and proud and absolutely covered in yellow flowers that drop down to decorate the yard with their petals.

I have had so many different favorite trees, depending where I was , and if travelling to new areas, etc...
I love them all, well maybe not the invasives...
One of my top favorite is  probably the oak. Everywhere I was, in my past and childhood, the focus was on FAST growing trees, so I am attracted to the opposite. Oaks also attract a lot of different wildlife, birds and bugs.
But hazel, birch, linden, ash, alder, chestnut, apple, plum, cherry and walnut are also great favorites, for this part of Europe.


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Beeches have their also own charm, and even though they are shade tolerant (unlike oaks for instance), they have shallow root systems and are easily affected by drought. With increasing number of storms, they get easily toppled over, the 1987 big storm in the UK affected a huge number of beeches.
Beechnuts feed also a lot of wild animals, moths and butterfly caterpillars, and the tree is popular among birds needing a cavity to nest.

I love trees....

I used to think my favorite trees were oaks. I grew up in Minnesota around red and white oaks, and then I moved to Florida where there are beautiful old live oaks, dripping with moss and studded with air plants.

Then I went I went England and saw its tall, majestic plane trees. Then Mallorca with orchards upon orchards full of twisted, very old olive trees.

I think there something really awe-inspiring about an old tree that wears its age and what it has weathered as a badge of honor, like wind-swept shore pines on an ocean bluff or mountain pinyons. I've planted both on my property in hopes of bringing some of that beauty home.

Another one that grows on my property that is a really beautiful tree is an old big leaf maple. Wow. They are most spectacular when grown as a single tree and not a stand of many together.

How could I possibly choose?