Joyce H. Newman is the editor of Consumer Reports’ GreenerChoices.org, and has been a Docent with The New York Botanical Garden for the past six years.

Across from the Garden’s main Café is a grove of Nikko firs (Abies homolepsis) that was planted in 1928, and has since become part of the Arthur and Janet Ross Conifer Arboretum at the NYBG. Much like a few of the unique conifers we have previously discussed, these trees are native to Japan, and commonly grow in mountainous areas where they need cool, moist, and often snowy environments to thrive. But despite the tree’s native habitat, the word nikko in Japanese actually means “sunlight” or “sunshine.”

You could travel to Mt. Fuji in Japan to see these fir trees growing in abundance. However, the grove right here in the Bronx is an amazing example in itself, due to the fact that firs are difficult to grow in urban environments. In fact, it would be even harder to establish a healthy grove of these trees today given ongoing climate change.
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Tanyosho pines (Pinus densiflora 'Umbraculifera')

The Arthur and Janet Ross Conifer Arboretum at The New York Botanical Garden covers nearly 40 acres of rolling landscape in the heart of the garden. It became the first collection of living plants at the Garden with plantings started in 1901, and now boasts more than 250 mature conifers, some of which are more than 100 years old.

Some of the earliest conifers to arrive at the garden–planted in 1908–are the Tanyosho pines, conifers that display a beautiful, orange-red bark with branches that can often be seen spreading in an umbrella shape. Our grove of five mature specimens is a very unique example of the species in the U.S., especially when considering that each tree is more than a century old.

Did you know that globally, boreal conifer forests cover more land mass than any other type of forest on the planet? In fact, they take up more space than all of the tropical rain forests combined. This makes conifers an extremely important family of trees, not to mention record-holders for the world’s oldest, tallest, and most massive trees.
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There’s something about this image the evokes dancers: the movement, the volume, the geometry.

Ross Conifer Arboretum (photo by Ivo M. Vermeulen)

The snow gathering on this Magnolia kobus near the Visitor Center makes it look like something out of a fantastic dream.

(photo by Ivo M. Vermeulen)

Not Christmas lights. Sunlight.

In the Ross Conifer Arboretum (Photo by Ivo M. Vermeulen)