The Manchurian Pear?

Do you know HOW HARD it is to identify a tree by its leaf?

1. The Gardening Book Index. Flipping useless. That's because if you don't know the proper name of the tree ( and of course you don't !) you have Buckley's chance of finding it in the index.

2. The Gardening Book. You could flick through the book looking at every picture. Hah! Have you forgotten that pictures of trees in gardening books are all out of focus and small?

3. The Internet. Oh yes. The internet. Try googling 'identification of leaves'. You will find an Easy Leaf Identifier. It will ask: Is your leaf simple or compound? Simple. OK. Is your leaf lobed or unlobed? Lobed. Then it is probably a mulberry or sassafras. What? But it can't be! Oh, but you didn't read the part where it says this only identifies North American Natives. Bah! Useless!

4. The Local Council Website. This looks promising. The Burnside Council has a list of all the different types of street trees, and you can click on them for further information. First, you eliminate all the ones you know. Then, aha! it might be a Chinese Pistachio! You click on it. The Chinese Pistachio grows to ten metres and has brilliant autumn foliage. There is a faint picture behind the information. The leaf doesn't look right though. Well, maybe it's a Manchurian Pear. This is what you have always suspected anyway. You click on the Manchurian Pear. It grows to ten metres and has brilliant autumn foliage. You look hard at the faint picture. It is, unhelpfully, exactly the same! The penny-pinchers! Can't even afford a proper picture. No joy there.

5. Your Friend's Place. You suddenly remember, as you are leaving your friend's house one morning, that the street tree outside her house is the very one you are trying to identify. You know however that she won't be able to tell you name of the tree, because her language skills aren't up to it, unless it is Chinese. You think to yourself, but if it is a Manchurian Pear, it IS Chinese! And then you remember that you always get into a muddle when you think something is Chinese, and she doesn't.

6. A Certain Piece of Paper Possibly in a Folder in Your Friend's House. As you are driving home a memory returns to you of a certain information sheet your friend received last year from the Campbelltown Council, telling her about her new street tree, its name and characteristics, and asking her to keep an eye on it and water it every now and then, in the summer months. And you remember that your friend showed you the information sheet and asked you to explain it to her, and you did. Which means you did know the name of the tree, once.

7. Your Memory. And you FORGOT!

Autumn Ramblings

It's the last day of autumn, here. We walk to the shops.

We cross Portrush Road and walk down Percival Street, past the hole in the ground that was once Clayton Aged Care Home. The street trees are not very old. Under them, on the footpath, are shiny red ovate leaves that look like they've been punched out of leather. Some have bright yellow edges, others have startling green veins.

It irritates me that I don't know the name of these trees. That won't stop me from calling them Manchurian Pear. Because that's what I think they are, and I have my reasons.

Now we have turned the corner on to Queen Street. It's quite dark, for two thirty in the afternoon. That's because the street is lined with huge plane trees. At least I think they are plane trees, and I have my reasons. The footpath is littered with fallen plane tree leaves, as big as poppadoms, and as crunchy. The colour of these is ordinary dead leaf brown, but that is something that happens to them after they have fallen off the plane trees.

On the trees, the leaves are a different brown entirely. The glowing brown of rust, the curdling brown of yellow and the fading brown of green. The colour of snakes, the colour of something being not quite right with your eyes, the colour of menace.

Fortunately, we soon cross this street into Wall Street.