Two days ago I posted a photo of this mysterious and scary-looking object that I found on the trunk of my car:
I asked readers to identify it, and they weighed in yesterday. The consensus seemed to be that it was a seed pod from a Turkish Hazel tree, Corylus colurna (also called the Turkish Filbert), and certainly did not come from the tree that hung over my car—probably a black locust, which produces a legume pod that looks nothing like the above.
To solve this mystery, I inspected the trees and ground around my car, which I hadn’t moved since the triffid pod appeared on its trunk. First, here is my car in situ (far side of the road second car from the left). Every one of the three trees you can see are locust trees, so the pod could not have fallen from one of them.
Nevertheless, the ground under the locust tree next to my car (and the one behind it) was littered with dried pods. See them?
More:
The underside of the pod, showing the seeds. They look like hazelnuts to me.
And the two trees across the street from my car. This one looks like an oak (remember, I am a “fly guy,” not a botanist):
And the leaves of the other (you can see my car at upper left). I couldn’t get a better shot as the wind was blowing hard and the leaves out of reach.
Now the leaves of that tree sort of look like those of the Turkish hazel, as do the seed pods, as shown in this photo from Wikipedia, but the shape isn’t exactly the same. But of course leaf shape can vary depending on the local environment, sun, and other factors:
So this may be a Turkish hazel, which readers have found is a tree planted along Chicago streets. If it’s not, perhaps it’s a relative.
The only remaining mystery is this: why were the pods found only underneath locust trees across the street? I found NO pods underneath the putative Turkish hazel or oak. One answer may be that the squirrels took the pods tree across the street to eat the nuts (or cache them)—but why would they do that? Or the pods underneath the locusts could have been blown across the street, or fallen from the tree across the street. That doesn’t make sense, either given the absence of pods under the putative source tree.
I will refrain from further comment, as I have no solution. If readers want a better picture of the putative hazel tree, let me know.
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The putative hazel tree photo doesn’t look like a match to me, but it is kind of blurry so….?
Are there any of the “mysterious and scary-looking objects” hanging from any tree branches?
The second tree is not a hazel, but a maple (Acer spp.). You can clearly see the opposite branching. Hazels are in the Corylaceae (or Betulaceae) family, all species of which have alternate leaves. So the mystery continues, but the fruit (nuts) are definitely a hazel (Corylus) species.
I concur.
I think the mystery stash could be due to squirrel activity or perhaps someone collected a bunch of the hazel nuts and abandoned them.
I wish I could see the trunk more clearly just to make sure it’s a maple and not a sycamore.
… the tree in the 7th photograph, i.e.
There can be only one answer.
God.
I’ve heard He spreads pods in mysterious ways.
Have you not noticed? “God” and “pod” differ only by one letter!
Pod moves in mysterious ways.
Now we’re *really* going all out _Day of the Triffids_, no?
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The putative ‘hazel’ tree is some kind of Maple and not the source of the seed pod. So? Maybe squirrels had a party or maybe a child gathered a bunch of the hazel pods to take home and plant or eat and he dropped them there. Also maybe,the Turkish Hazel can also grow as a bush so might be less obvious along the street but in s garden.
The first tree across the street is a silver maple (Acer saccharinum). The second one I’m not as sure about. It could be either a Norway maple (Acer platanoides) or sugar maple (Acer saccharum) but is probably the former. None of those trees produce seeds that even remotely resemble the hazelnut pod.
I concur. The first tree is Silver Maple, and the second one is Norway Maple or Sugar Maple.
Yes, did not look carefully enough-not an oak and most likely a silver maple. Got oaks on the brain these days.
Probably the squirrels.
Of course it’s the squirrels.
They’re everywhere.
They can’t be trusted.
Is it possible the pods are designed to roll along the ground during a windy day?
yesterday’s leaf is from a honey locust, not a black locust. super common street tree in chicago. all over hyde park and campus.
the leaves from today are silvr maple and maple.
the turkish hazelnut/filbert is definitely planted on campus and in HP residences and that is its characteristic seed pod. http://zipcodezoo.com/index.php/Corylus_colurna
I’ve seen them at drexel and 56th, and it appears the tree inventory shows that AND at the place you found them as well
and yes, squirrels often process their food in a place other than where they picked it up!
2010 U of Chicago Tree Inventory Chicago, IL
You can filter by tree genus or species, or a few other criteria.
I have a hypothesis. Somewhere around the adjacent tennis court grows a Corylus Colurna. Seeds from this tree littered the tennis court prompting would-be tennis players to sweep the court. They swept the seeds to the nearest street, which happens to be where you are parked.
http://www.independent.ie/irish-news/danny-healyrae-and-the-little-people-fairies-to-blame-for-problems-on-bad-road-says-td-36009894.html
The only logical answer is Fairies.
I’d like to put in a request for a link to a Google map of the location where the PCC-mobile is parked in the photo.
I was hoping you didn’t park in front of where you live. I do understand why you wouldn’t want your address known.
Didn’t the university give you an under cover spot in a garage as part of your retirement package?
Or you could call the city parks dept. and ask where they have planted turkish hazel?. Better use the latin name tho’
You are correct about the ‘oak’ tho’ I don’t know which species, other than some kind of red oak.
No, that is a maple, as is the other tree in today’s photos. They are NOT hazelnut trees. As you can see in Jerry’s Hazelnut tree photo from Wikipedia, hazelnuts have alternate leaves, while maples have opposite leaves (leaves in pairs). This is one of the first traits that a botanist checks when facing a tree ID. The second maple in particular shows the opposite (paired) branching pattern.
Yes, thank you. That is a maple. I did not look carefully enough.
I don’t know any “why did the squirrel cross the road” jokes
Where I live, the joke might be:
Q: Why did the squirrel cross the road?
A: He didn’t. He made it only half way.
Because the city had an alternate-side park rule?
The third picture:
Identifying Norway Maple and Sugar Maple Trees
The two are superficially similar, but you can tell them apart by checking a few details. My first guess is Norway Maple, but try this:
“During the growing season, Norway maple leaves are unique in that a milky fluid is seen when their petiole is removed from the stem.”
Or maybe you don’t care, since neither one bears hazelnuts.
Another clue: the black spots on the leaves. Norway Maples are suffering a lot of that this summer due to the weather conditions.
Sorry, that’s not the third picture, but the penultimate picture.
I agree that it is probably a Norway maple, but with overlapping leaves it’s a little hard to distinguish which lobes belong to which leaves in the photograph.
The creationists would have a good laugh if they found out a vaunted evolution expert can’t identify some of the most common trees.
Of course they would. In their world, where an engineer can fully understand evolutionary biology and cause the entire edifice to crumble with a single penetrating thermodynamic insight, what’s to know except the taxonomy of your neighborhood?
“Man who leaves peanuts on his window sill astonished that squirrel food may get moved from place to place”
Filbert = hazelnut
Look for shrubs. The hazelnut can be a shrub. If there are no hazelnut shrubs, that “sweeping the tennis courts” hypothesis sounds plausible, and testable.
Meanwhile, in suburban Chicago:
Hazelnut Fest expands to 3 days
Hazel Crest is returning its Hazelnut Festival to three days, officials said.
The festival will be Aug. 4-6 at the Hazel Crest village grounds, 3000 W. 170th Place.
That’s only about 16 km from you. Perhaps someone attended Hazelnut Fest and swept out their car afterwards.
You should probably stop parking that classic car out there on the mean streets. Who knows what will fall on it next.
Another hypothesis: buses, landscaping trucks, delivery vans, and other large, flat-roofed vehicles that make frequent stops act as vectors for the dispersal of fallen pods throughout the city.
Because it’s a message. The squirrels set that there as a warning. Feed us the GOOD seeds or else!
Got to be careful about making conclusions based upon small data sets. Could the aerodynamics of those seed pods come into play? I have no idea of their mass but if the wind were blowing one direction one day (sweeping all of the pods off thataway) and then shifted to the opposite direction, that seed pod could have come over the roof from the next street over quite easily.
Religious answers are so much easier–“Ah, it is a mystery, my son.”
My neighbor had a large hazelnut tree. Every year the jays and squirrels would bring many of them into my yard. You could watch them going back and forth and back and forth.
Maybe if you looked for a hazelnut nearby or watched for squirrels and jays you could find the source.
2000 Civic with 74,000 miles? That’s only 4,352 miles a year and I bet a huge chunk of those miles came from your Reader road trip. Obviously, Chicago is a walking town; I imagine it has decent city transit as well.
I have to drive 24 miles round-trip just to go the grocery store.
Whatever you do, don’t fall asleep next to one of those pods!
FWIW, I’ve recently come across this tree identification site – leafsnap.
I haven’t used it much so I don’t know how good it is. A search on hazelnut failed. It’s listed as Turkish Filbert or Corylus colurna in the table. One nice thing about it is it includes an image of the tree’s bark which is often very helpful in tree id.
http://leafsnap.com/species/
Or, some student prankster put the pod there and is cracking up reading this discussion…
(I know that’s a bit like resorting to ‘Goddidit’ but I suppose it’s a possibility. To quote Sherlock, When you have eliminated all other possibilities…
Has one big advantage over Goddidit, students exist).
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