The Cedar of Lebanon Grove near Conservatory Water

Central Park's own Conservancy calls this a single cedar of Lebanon. A blogger who found the same spot in 2016 counted several, growing together as a small grove, both describing the identical trees just inside the park's 72nd Street entrance, behind the information kiosk near Conservatory Water. Nobody has resolved the discrepancy, and this project would rather say so than guess. What both sources agree on is the plaque at the base, dedicating the planting for grandchildren, a gift from patrons Linda and Mort Janklow, and the species itself: Cedrus libani, the tree on Lebanon's flag and, in the older stories, the timber said to have built Solomon's Temple. It is evergreen where almost everything else in this part of Central Park is not, a pyramidal, blue green shape that holds its form across every season rather than only one. Its cones grow upright on the branch instead of hanging, ripening through autumn into rows that look, from a distance, like eggs balanced along each limb. No planting date survives for this grove; a 2016 estimate guesses a few decades old for Central Park's cedars generally, honest but not a measurement of this specific planting. Conservatory Water sits a five minute walk from three of this walk's other trees, the closest addition this cluster has had.