Seuss tree?

June 8, 2006 2:34 PM

Near the southwestern corner of Key Arena in Seattle is a tree that looks like it was drawn by Dr. Seuss. What is it?
posted by squidlarkin to Science & Nature (9 answers total)

Response by poster: If you throw the tags on this post into google image search, you'll see a picture, but I didn't want to link it and steal someone's bandwidth.
posted by squidlarkin at 2:35 PM on June 8, 2006

#5 result from the Google (text) search here. Mimosa tree?
posted by kindall at 2:43 PM on June 8, 2006

That's a really tough picture to make out. Maybe some kind of juniper?
posted by mr_roboto at 2:58 PM on June 8, 2006

Arthur Lee Jacobsen told me a tree which looked exactly like that was an Alaska Cedar.
posted by jamjam at 3:12 PM on June 8, 2006

It's a weeping confier of some kind. Either a spruce, a pine, or a cedar. Can't tell without a better photo, but it's definitely a weeping conifer. There are lots of varieties of spruce, pine, etc, so to nail it we would need a better photo with a closeup of the needle. You can see two weepers on this page. They bow over naturally, and are easy to train into weird shapes and topiaries.
posted by iconomy at 3:31 PM on June 8, 2006

Here is a young Atlas Cedar, which could be the tree.
posted by iconomy at 3:33 PM on June 8, 2006

I'm pretty sure it's a Sequoiadendron giganteum pendulum. I researched getting one for my front yard last year. Didn't get it, but I found a nursery that had them.
posted by nonmyopicdave at 4:04 PM on June 8, 2006

If it's what I think it is, there's a truly magnificent one in Seattle's Kubota Gardens that has grown in a spiral shape. Blows my mind every time I go there.
posted by carterk at 4:14 PM on June 8, 2006

I couldn't see the pictures, but it could be a monkey tree. I had one of those in a house in lived in in Seattle (Ballard), and it was the strangest tree I'd ever seen.
posted by zardoz at 2:44 AM on June 9, 2006