Day 123: The a-peel of trees

One of the many trees I've come to love on the west coast is the arbutus. It's a striking evergreen tree, with ruddy bark which peels off every year, revealing paler wood below. However, it's not a fir- or pine-type evergreen - it's more like a Mediterranean plant, with big waxy leaves. And as you'd expect, it grows in warm, dry spots such as south-facing rocky slopes. There are a few around Vancouver, but not that many. The bluffs of West Vancouver and along part of the Sea-to-Sky highway towards Squamish are good places to see them, as is the Sunshine Coast, southern Gulf Islands and southern Vancouver Island too.

When we first moved here, we noticed that one of the streets in Kitsilano is called Arbutus Street, but we weren't quite sure how it should be pronounced. Fortunately the bus drivers came to our rescue, as they called out the names of the streets en route. (That job is done by an automatic announcer now, which is sadly often indistinguishable and sometimes unintelligible.) And so we learned it was pronounced "arr-BYOO-tus", and not "ARR-buh-tus". Thanks to the ever-reliable Pojar & Mackinnon we also learned its alternative name, the Pacific madrone, a name that the Americans tend to use more often. Personally I rather like arbutus. Today's photo is one such tree, well into its peel, located near the home of the parents of a friend of ours on Vancouver Island.

Peeling arbutus tree