Finch Arboretum used to be somebody's houses.
Ancient Trees in Finch Arboretum
Spokane, United States
John A.
Finch Arboretum grew from land a pioneer family gave the city, and six of Spokane's most remarkable trees now stand within a few hundred metres of each other inside it. Daniel H. Dwight's own family provided part of the original ground, and a Hungarian linden planted in his name still grows there. The state's largest white willow is here too, started as somebody's garden tree before the ground became a public arboretum, growing beside two of the first dawn redwoods ever brought to North America, seed-grown after a stand once known only from fossils turned up alive in China in 1943. A Miyabe maple, modest by its own species but the largest recorded in Washington, a Norway spruce the city calls its second tallest, and a broad Mexican pinyon pine round out the six. The arboretum is free, open daily, and every one of these trees sits inside a single short walk.
The largest white willow in Washington started life as somebody's garden tree.
Autumn colour
Botanists knew this tree from fossils before they knew it was alive.
Its name promises more than the tree delivers, and that is fine, because the name is comparing it to the wrong thing.
At 123 feet, Spokane's Heritage Tree Register calls this Norway spruce the second tallest of its kind in the city, and names the tree that beats it: a spruce on 26th Avenue in the Rockwood Historic...
Mexican pinyon pine belongs on a dry mountainside in the American Southwest, not in a Spokane arboretum with a state-record willow and Chinese dawn redwoods for neighbours.
More parks worth the walk: every park we map. Or explore by city: Lisbon · New York · Tokyo · Madrid · Geneva · Singapore