UC Irvine has over 24,000 trees on the campus, and 11,000 are in the central Aldrich park. I have been taking interesting pictures of some of them, locating them in convenient areas for walks or exploration, and identifying them. My results are on my flickr account named dennis.silverman . This can be accessed by searching Google for “flickr Dennis Silverman”. The direct link is tapping here: dennis.silverman
The central circular park section of the campus is named Aldrich Park. There was already a comprehensive map and identification of these trees by Tony Soeller and Cassandra Squires at http://sites.uci.edu/ucitrees/ I have added to my flickr account my own pictures of some of these trees and their interesting blooms at various seasons of the year.
I have pictured and recorded the identity of campus trees around the mile long Ring Road, centered around the buildings around Aldrich Park. I have also explored trees in sections of the UCI campus around the areas of: the Student Center (including the flagpole and Langson Library); Social Sciences; Engineering; the University Club; Physical Sciences; Biological Sciences and the Ayala Library; and Humanities. I have also added a few trees in University Hills.
Almost all of the tree identification was patiently provided to me by Matt Deines, LEED AP, Senior Planner, Environmental Planning and Sustainability at UCI The mistakes in tree identification are my own. Since I am still an amateur in this, please feel free to aid me by email. Andrew Herndon, Vice President of Community Development of the Irvine Campus Housing Authority, has also been very helpful in identifying trees for me in University Hills.
I also have added some trees and views of walks in Laguna Beach. In walking around the North Lake of Woodbridge Lake across from our UCI Osher Lifelong Learning Institute, I have mostly taken pictures of the interesting ducks, geese, and birds that visit the lake.
In 1995, the UCI campus developed a Green and Gold Plan (updated in 2014) with a uniform set of trees to be planted in the future based on those that are native California trees, that are drought tolerant, that are very scenic, and that are appropriate for their locations, including easy to maintain. For one thing, this list limits the varieties of trees that one has to learn, but is still large enough to provide many trees, which also bloom at various times through the year.
In driving around Irvine and local communities, I see many of the same trees. These are easiest to spot and identify at the time that they are blooming or seeding or turning fall colors. Many of the local communities use a similar list of trees to select their own trees.
