nootka cypress or yellow cedar
Chamaecyparis nootkatensis (D. Don) Spach.- several common names – e.g.
The generic name is a transliteration of the name of the Nuu-chah-nulth aboriginal tribe of Vancouver Island, British Columbia. Its original range isalso found on the west coast of North America, where it is age can reach almost 2000 years. It has a somewhat bizarre habit with overhanging branches and often interestingly twisted and exfoliating bark. The annual shoots have the upper and lower side of the small, aspen-like pointed leaves almost similar. Cones are spherical, small up to 1 cm in diameter, with scales ending in a triangular tip. In our garden, it can be found in the northern tip, in a conifer group with silver spruce and redwood opposite the gloriette and carved beehives.
Japanese cherry
Prunus serrulata Lindl.
Cherry originally from Japan is located near the chapel of St. Terezia and is said to be one of the oldest in Prague. The current specimen is already at the end of its biological age and has a rather drooping, albeit supported, crown. The leaves are petiolate, ovate, reddish-brown to green. The flowers are pink, often in short racemes. The fruit is a small drupe. In Japan, the beauty of sakura is celebrated with a holiday called hanami, and for many Japanese, sakura is a symbol of the ephemeral nature of life due to the short flowering time – life is seen as short and beautiful as the flowers.
blue spruce
Picea pungens Engelm., 1879
The so-called silver spruce, originally from the southwest of the USA, was often planted in the Czech Republic during normalization in habitats devastated by emissions in the Krušné hory Mountains, where it however grows very slowly. In its homeland, it reaches an age of up to 600 years and a height of 30-50 m. The silvery whitish to bluish needles up to 30 mm long are stiff, sharp and square. Cones are soft, cylindrically elongated, then light brown when ripe. In the northern part of Vojanovy sady there is a stout double trunk, which in recent years has more often dropped older years of needles due to an attack by the so called spruce blight (fungus Lirula macrospora). Its neighbour of the same species, growing a few meters further, resists attack much better.
saucer magnolia
Magnolia soulangeana Soul.-Bod.
A garden hybrid of the M.denudata and M.liliflora reaches up to 10 m, popular for early and abundant flowering. Beautiful pink flowers bloom in April before the leaves sprout. The tree can tolerate frost down to -15°C, but the flowers can be damaged by late frosts. The leaves are ovate, up to 15 cm long. The fruit (follicetum) is about 8 cm long and 3 cm wide, pink at first, turning black when ripe, with 1 cm woody blisters. In Vojanovy sady it is represented by several beautiful specimens, of which the one on the terrace is a favorite rest-tree for peacocks during the light part of the day. Another cultivar found at the main entrance to the park is Japanese magnolia (Magnolia kobus) – a smaller tree with white star-shaped flowers.
gingko
Ginkgo biloba L.
It is of ancient origin, classified like conifers to gymnosperms and developmentally closer to them than to deciduous ones. He lives to a great age – in his Chinese homeland, it is said to be almost 5 thousand years old. Allegedly, it already existed in the Paleolithic 300 million years ago. With conifers, it has a similar arrangement of veins into two-lobed leaves composed of individual „needles growing“ parallel to each other. It usually starts flowering and producing fruits from the age of 30 years, but it is a dioecious tree. Wind pollination takes place up to a distance of 5 km – pollen from male catkins dusts the pollination drop of the eggs of female plants, from which a spherical fruit resembling „mirabelle plums“ develops, under the flesh of the fruit there is a white edible nut. In Vojanovy sady, there is a female tree, which bears fruits in late autumn, after leaf fall, which smells after vomiting. It is located in close proximity to big red beech – between a pond and a group of conifers.
giant sequoia
Sequoiadendron giganteum (Lindl.) Buchh.
It is the largest tree on Earth, reaching an age of up to 3 thousand years. It originally belongs to the once richly represented group of conifers, which flourished in the Mesozoic, in the Cretaceous period. The tree can grow to a height of 85 m, but the volume of wood reaches up to 1.5 thousand m3. The spirally arranged needles are scaly, 8 mm short lanceolate and longitudinally furrowed below with a bluish-green color. Egg-shaped cones grow to a size of 4-8 cm and behind each lignified scale there are 5 winged seeds. Today it occurs naturally on the western slopes of the Sierra Nevada in California between 1,500 and 2,500 m above sea level, and in Europe only as an ornamental tree in parks. In Vojanový sady, it was planted in a group of conifers in honor of Jindřic Pavliš the elder.
European beech
Fagus sylvatica Purpurea L.
In a canopy of clean beech trees, the visitor usually has a feeling of temple monumentality, it is not for nothing that foresters call this tree the mother of the forest. Beech is both an important economic and landscape-forming key species, significantly enriching the forest soil with nutrients through its fallow. The beech buds are typically reddish-brown and long conical-pointed, the oval fresh-green shiny leaves are petiolate and entire, in the case of the red form they are dark reddish-brown and shallowly toothed, the bark of beech trees is smooth and distinctly whitish-grey. The edible kernels, called beech, are found in a calyx with soft spines, 2-4 adjoined in a triangular fashion. There are three impressive individuals over 20 m tall in Vojanovy sady. Thanks to their solitary location, they form a wide crown with branches reaching to the ground. One specimen is on the terrace of the park, the other near the pond. The tree begins to bear fruit when it is 15-20 years old and lives up to 300 years.
white willow
Salix alba Tristis L.
A robust, fast-growing dioecious tree of floodplain forests, excellently tolerant to high ground water levels. White willow is one of the most frequently interbreeding willow species. The leaves are alternate, slightly saw-toothed on the circumference, approx. 11 cm long and 1.2–1.6 cm wide, covered with fine racemes, blooming in early spring at the same time as the leaves sprout. The fruits are cone-shaped The bark of older trees is coarsely fissured longitudinally. Its branches are usually drastically cut and the crowns create shape of the so-called old woman – often depicted by romantic fairytale motives on Josef Lada watermanęs paintings. In Vojanovy Sady, there is a stout willow tree near the lake, and every year its trunk is conspicuously covered by edible yellow-orange mushroom (Laetiporus sulphureus).
The list of perennial woody plants includes wintergreen barberry (Berberis julianea), scarlet firethorn (Pyracantha coccinea) – spherically shaped shrub near toilets; panicled hydrangea (Hydrangea paniculata, H. arborescens, H.grandiflora), fragrant/wrinkled-leaved/gorse viburnum (Viburnum farreri + rhytidophyllum + lantana), flowering quince (Chaenomeles speciosa), common hazel (Corylus avellana atropurpurea), common lilac (Syringa vulgaris), English dogwood (Philadelphus coronarius), many-flowered Cotoneaster (Cotoneaster multiflora), dogwood (Cornus sp., Deutzia scabra, Waigelia sp.), spiers (Spirea van Houttei, Spirea arguta, Spirea x bumalda, Spiraea nipponica), boxwood (Buxus sempervirens).
The list of perennial woody plants includes wintergreen barberry (Berberis julianea), scarlet firethorn (Pyracantha coccinea) – spherically shaped shrub near toilets; panicled hydrangea (Hydrangea paniculata, H. arborescens, H.grandiflora), fragrant/wrinkled-leaved/gorse viburnum (Viburnum farreri + rhytidophyllum + lantana), flowering quince (Chaenomeles speciosa ‚RUBRA‘), common hazel (Corylus avellana atropurpurea), common lilac (Syringa vulgaris), English dogwood (Philadelphus coronarius), many-flowered Cotoneaster (Cotoneaster multiflora), dogwood (Cornus sp., Deutzia scabra, Waigelia sp.), spiers (Spirea van Houttei, Spirea arguta, Spirea x bumalda, Spiraea nipponica), boxwood (Buxus sempervirens).