Trails give visitors chance to see trees

By Ian Clift
Summer reporter

Visitors wishing to explore the University grounds can use one of three tree trails representing some of the 8,000 various trees found on the Purdue campus.

There are three trails that cover a great deal of campus, said Fran Peterson, landscape and turf supervisor for Purdue University. The trails are blue, gold and green trails.

Each trail covers a different section of campus and contains anywhere from 30 to 36 trees marked with a numbered post.

The Gold Trail travels through the center of campus, beginning at the Visitor’s Center with the Bitternut hickory and including the Japanese tree, lilac and the Honey locust.

Some trees represented on the Blue Trail, which takes visitors from the Visitor’s Center towards the north side of campus, include the European beech and Paperbark Maple, a tree which has bark similar to that of the birch.

The Green Trail starts with the Norway Spruce at the ground service building just north of Lilly Hall. The Ginkgo tree, native to China and Japan is represented on this trail and is very popular in cities because of its drought, pollution and insect resistance.

Tim Detzner, arborist for Purdue Grounds Services, said, "We have somewhere in the neighborhood of 150 ginkgo trees total, 35 females."

The Lebanon Cedar is a rarely planted tree famous for its biblical use in the Temple of Solomon and is also found on the Green Trail.

The female of the Ginkgo species is known to bear an ill-smelling fruit, as a result, experimental injections have been started with the trees in order to prevent them from fruiting, said Peterson.

Peterson said, "We do have some females, if (the experiments) work we’re going to expand it to all the females that cause problems."

Detzner who works full time with two other people said, "We have over 8,000 trees that we maintain, so that’s plenty to keep us busy."

Other than small problems he said: "It's just a matter of keeping them trimmed so that they are not in the way of people and then occasionally if they were to die we would remove them and have them replaced."

"I don't think that a lot of people realize the kind of trees that are out there and this is one way to expose them to them," said Detzner. For a complete listing of the trees in the three paths around Purdue, a Web site has been created at www.purdue.edu/oop/trees.

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