We met just past Tresidder, in front of the Faculty Club House at the entrance to Kingscote Gardens. There was a group of like fifteen of us and the leader was this guy named Sairus Patel. There were a bunch of old people there, including couples and other important people. One old lady was the editor of the 2005 edition of Trees of Stanford and Environs. All the adults were talking and being so nice to each other. They had their own community and it felt so good just to watch them socialize and talk about things. A few of the other people there were students, like me, but I think I was the only frosh. I didn't recognize anybody. A few of the students had a little group too and they were just talking about trees. We got handed this cool list of trees with all the scientific names and abbreviations with a nice little map on the back.

The Autumn Tree Walk Tree List

The first tree Sairus showed us was Quercus agrifolia (QuAg), or coast live oak. Sairus said that the coast live oak is the most common oak tree in the area and that it has leaves that are cupped inward at the end that have veiny lines along them. They look just like how the tributaries in the area look. These oaks are big and have acorns. He said that its Spanish name is encina and said the story about why it is that I can't remember. I looked up and just saw a regular looking tree, and around me all the other people on the walk were fascinated by everything about this tree. That's when my magical journey started.

Quercus Agrifolia leaves and acorn From: Howard E. McMinn & Evelyn Maino, An Illustrated Manual of Pacific Coast Trees

Then we looked at Sequoia Sempervirens (Sese), or coast redwoods. The wood was indeed red on these trees. These trees are super important to California and are the tallest in America. This tree is even on the Stanford insignia so its importance to Stanford is even higher. Sairus said that redwoods need a lot of water because their root system is shallow and wide-spreading. The tree was huge. I couldn't wrap my arms around half of its trunk. So girthy. Here is a diagram from the Trees of Stanford website on a sequoia branch.

Branchlet of Sequoia sempervirens, coast redwood, on left, compared with Sequoiadendron giganteum, giant sequoia. Trees of Stanford & Environs, by Ronald Bracewell

After the redwoods, we saw a big group of Japanese maples Acer palmatum (Acpa) with red leaves. Everybody was fascinated by these trees. People were touching the branches and pulling off leaves and putting them up to the sky and doing a whole body analysis. I was just sitting there too shy and half too weirded out to start touching the leaves of a tree without knowing what I was doing. I'm sure everybody else was analyzing the density and opacity of the leaves and comparing it to the relative nutrients in the soil and whether or not squirrels like to eat the leaves of the tree. I would've just been touching leaves randomly like a dumbass so I just decided not to. Do squirrels even eat leaves?

Sairus explained how inside the building of Kingscote, there are huge balconies with good air flow because back in the day, people used to live inside and they believed that sleeping with good air flow helped fight against tuberculosis. Unrelated to trees, but interesting still.

Then, we saw a big palm tree called Phoenix canariensis (Phca) or Canary Island date palm. Sairus explained that these palm trees are the ones lining palm drive that everybody sees. He told us how palm trees grow with the fronds dropping down and needing to be cleared out because they are big obstacles. Later on, my friend Lauryn said that each P. canariensis takes 80k a year to maintain. Sairus said that in the tree community, some people don't consider palms as trees. When palms are little babies, their trunk is as thick as it will be as when they are adults. They do not grow in the same simple ring patterns as most trees do. The cells on the palms remain the same cells throughout the palm's whole life. The cells harden and strengthen but they do not expand outwards. Palms only grow upwards.

Palm Drive is lined almost exclusively with Canary Island date palms L.A. Cicero/Stanford News Service

After checking out the palm tree or maybe not tree, we saw Acca sellowiana which is pineapple guava. Sairus told two students to go hunting for guavas and like Tarzan, they jumped through the bushes and got a ton of pineapple guavas from the floor for all of us. The students and Sairus clearly had a connection from before the tree walk, which was super cool. They knew what to do and were all on the same page and it was awesome to just watch their connection. One old guy brought out a pocket knife and cut the guava in half and straight up ate it. I don't know how safe that is, especially because man was old enough to have only white hair. If that guava was toxic, man could've straight up died. Later I tried the guava pineapple and it tasted just like a guava mixed with pineapple. It was very good.

Fruit from A. Sellowiana, shot by me

One of the girls in the group had a sketchbook out and made picture perfect drawings of all the trees and fruits and plants we saw and it was so cool. She just like did it and honestly I don't know what it's for but it looks like she's trying to make an encyclopedia.

Then we went across the lawn to what Sairus described as the crown jewel of Kingscote. Araucaria bidwillii, the bunya bunya tree. I really like the bunya bunya tree. Here are some pictures that I took myself.

bunya bunya tree from across the lawn

bunya bunya from under the bunya bunya

floor under the bunya bunya with a cone piece of the bunya bunya

trunk of the bunya bunya

The bunya bunya is special for so many reasons. One old lady on the walk with me commented that the trunk of the bunya bunya is different than any tree she'd ever seen. It has horizontal lines around it rather than vertical ones. The cones of the bunya bunya are massive and are bigger than a soccer ball. They are super hard to find and are considered artifacts.

We looked at a couple more trees. One of them was the taxus baccata, the yew. The fruit and the bark of the yew is poisonous, and the wood has special properties so it bends well and is commonly used in bows for archery. The bark smells very bad too so people back in the day used to bury corpses under the yew in order to make the yew suck up all the bad smell. It's a myth. But maybe it actually works. I dunno. Also, the leaves of the yew curve upwards. If one of them happens to hit the floor, it can root itself and spawn another yew tree, which is super cool. The natives thought of the tree has having mystical resurrection properties.