Trees of Vancouver

Vancouver is famous for its trees. The range of vegetation in this green city is extraordinary. Native and cultivated trees, many of which are not found anywhere else in Canada, thrive in the mild, wet winters and drier summers.

Gerald Straley, a leading researcher and a popular science educator at the Botanical Garden at the University of British Columbia, knows Vancouver’s woody, green heritage well. In this comprehensive guide, the first of its kind, he draws attention to the great diversity of trees in the city -- on its streets, in its parks, and in its public and private gardens.

Trees of Vancouver is an invaluable guidebook for visitors and residents and an authoritative tool for horticulturists, landscape architects, naturalists, and the nursery industry. It provides detailed, easy-to-understand information on over 470 kinds of trees. Each entry contains particulars about the origins, general appearance, merits, problems, and uses in landscaping of individual species. To aid further in identification, entries specify locations where outstanding examples can be seen. The text is complemented by hundreds of the author’s delicate drawings of the leaves, flowers, fruits, or other distinctive features of individual trees, and by colour plates of 86 trees. For the reader who wants to spend a pleasant day exploring and identifying specimens, there are detailed maps of several locations in the city where a wide variety of trees can be seen.

Gerald B. Straley is Research Scientist and Curator of Collections at the UBC Botanical Garden. He is also Adjunct Professor of Plant Science, and Research Associate and Director of the Herbarium in the Department of Botany at the University of British Columbia.