Wilder Bowl, Oberlin College, and an Amur Cork Tree

In Albums: Oberlin colleges trees

Aug 8th, 2004, by Alex Zorach

This photo shows Wilder bowl on the campus of Oberlin College. This was a large, grassy area at the heart of Oberlin's campus, directly in front of the student union, Wilder hall, which is towards the left in the rear of this photo. This space was occasionally used for large events, but most of the time, weather permitting, it was used for chillin.

An interesting feature of this photo is the tree on the left. It's a little hard to tell from this photo alone, but this is an Amur cork tree, Phellodendron amurense, a species of tree native to east Asia. The Amur cork tree is easily identified by its unusual combination of long, compound leaves, somewhat like walnut or sumac, and its opposite leaf branching, like maple or ash. Superficially it looks somewhat similar to an ash tree but it is hard to mistake them...the leaflets on the Amur cork tree tend to have many more leaflets, and the bark is radically different. Amur cork trees are considered invasive in many parts of the U.S. They grow relatively well in Ohio, and I have seen them coming up from seed around Oberlin.

A number of these trees were removed from Wilder bowl, for reasons that I do not know of. I found it interesting that I immediately noticed their removal, but a lot of other students did not. I think I tend to be much more aware of trees and plants than most people are.