Himalayan Pine, or Pinus wallichiana

Often described as one of the most beautiful of all the pines, the Himalayan Pine, or Pinus wallichiana from the earlier P. excelsa, is native to the high mountain valleys of not only the Himalayas, but the Karakoram and Hindu Kush mountain ranges which extend across parts of Afghanistan, Bhutan, China, India, Myanmar, Nepal, and Pakistan.

Although the tree grows to a height of up to 150 feet in the wild, in cultivation it usually attains a height of up to 90 feet with a spread of 35 feet. It has gray-green needles that are eight inches long and produces slender cones that are six to ten inches long.

Seeds were introduced to England in 1827 by Nathaniel Wallich, a Danish botanist for whom its present botanical name is derived, and the tree became available to the European nursery trade in 1836, and thence to North America.

Himalayan Pine at Main Gate

“Among the numerous members of the pine family, it would be difficult to find one more beautiful and useful than the Himalayan [Pine],” noted nurseryman Joseph Meehan in the trade journal Park and Cemetery (1896). “There are but few others possessing the many good points of this one, and it is no wonder that it is such a universal favorite.” As the tree ages “there is rather more of a drooping tendency in the branches, and it is this, with its beautiful needles, which gives it such a charm. On large grounds, it is much in place in certain positions, and for cemetery planting it is unequaled.”

Riverview Cemetery’s single specimen, a stately tree that’s weathered many a winter, stands just inside the main gate to the west and was likely planted at the turn of the last century.

The Northern Red Oak, or Quercus ruba

Among the 500 trees comprising 71 species at Riverview Cemetery is a majestic specimen of Northern Red Oak, or Quercus ruba, which can be found along Myrtle Avenue in Section E near the southern boundary of the grounds.

Known for its brilliant red fall color, the tree is native to the eastern and central United States; its range extends into Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana to the south and Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, and Minnesota to the west. It can reach 60 to 75 feet in height with a crown spread of 45 feet at maturity when open grown, and the oblong-shaped leaves are five to eight inches long with seven to 11 bristle-tipped lobes.

Our tree has a 60-inch caliper as recorded by B.W. Bosenberg and Company, landscape architects based in Far Hills, N.J., which translates to a circumference of nearly 16 feet. The Sunday Times-Advertiser of December 12, 1915, notes that “due to his extensive knowledge in the care of trees, [Isaac] Stephens was given entire charge of the planting of all the trees in Riverview Cemetery, of which he was one of the founders,” likely making it among the earliest planted on the grounds after the Cemetery’s incorporation on February 28, 1858, a feat all the more remarkable as I am told it survived a lightning strike a number of decades ago.

Sassafras, or Sassafras albidum

Riverview Cemetery has but one Sassafras tree in its plant collection, that being a weather-beaten specimen in Section K that is likely more than a hundred years old. A deciduous tree, Sassafras albidum is native to Eastern North America where it generally grows from 40 to 50 feet in height in its northern range. Larger specimens are found in its southern range.

Sassafras in Section K at Riverview Cemetery in summer and fall colors

Sassafras is unusual in having three distinct leaf patterns — unlobed oval, bilobed, and trilobed — on the same plant. The leaves are bright green in the summer and turn a brilliant yellow-orange and red-orange in the fall.

Richard E. Weaver Jr., in the January 1976 issue of Arnoldia, the quarterly bulletin of the Arnold Arboretum, writes “the color and the effect of the fall foliage is about as spectacular as that of any tree, the leaves typically turning orange with tints of yellow, red, and salmon, and for this reason alone the tree deserves more recognition as an ornamental.”

The American Elm, or Ulmus americana

“Trees are the best monuments that a man can erect to his own memory. They speak his praises without flattery, and they are blessings to children yet unborn.” That’s what John Boyle, Fifth Earl of Cork and Orrery, said of trees in 1749.

American Elm along Valley Avenue at Riverview Cemetery

Whenever I have the occasion to walk the grounds of historic cemeteries, the mature trees dotting their landscapes bespeak the work of the nation’s earliest horticulturists. The idea of a “rural” cemetery for Trenton was conceived by Jacob M. Taylor in 1857. He introduced his plan to a group of the city’s leading citizens—William M. Force, John K. Smith, Isaac Stephens, David Witherup and William S. Yard—who together founded Riverview Cemetery on January 16, 1858. It was incorporated by an act of the state legislature of New Jersey on February 28, 1858.

The grounds of the then two-and-one-half-acre Cemetery were laid out according to a plan drawn by Smith, but the planting of the trees was tasked to Stephens. Indeed, the Sunday-Times Advertiser of December 12, 1915, described his residence, then owned by Charles S. Van Syckel, and its many specimen trees, noting: “Due to his extensive knowledge in the care of trees, Stephens was given entire charge of the planting of all the trees in Riverview Cemetery, of which he was one of the founders.”

The American Sycamore, or Platanus occidentalis

Platanus occidentalis, a colored
plate by Henri-Joseph Redouté in
North American Sylva, published
in 1819
Wikimedia Commons

The American Sycamore, whose botanical name is Platanus occidentalis, has common names that include American Plane, Buttonball, Buttonwood, Eastern Sycamore, Occidental Plane, and Whitewood. It is a deciduous tree, native throughout the Eastern United States and westward into the Central Plains States, and is generally found in moist soil, particularly along streams and lowlands, where they can reach up to 130 feet in height. In planted landscapes, however, they typically reach heights of 75 to 90 feet.

It has a distinctive yellow-white trunk with exfoliating bark, and its palmate leaves measure eight to 12 inches in length and four to eight inches in width.

A colored plate of the American Sycamore’s leaf, flower, seed ball, and seed, drawn by Henri-Joseph Redouté and engraved by Gabriel, appeared in the English edition of North American Sylva, or A Description of the Forest Trees of the United States, Canada and Nova Scotia, published in 1819.

Written by French botanist François Andrew Michaux and translated by Augustus Lucas Hillhouse, it noted that: “Among trees with deciduous leaves, none in the temperate zones, either on the Old or the New Continent, equals the dimensions of the planes. The species which grows in the Western World is not less remarkable for its amplitude and for its magnificent appearance than the Plane of Asia, whose majestic form and extraordinary size were so much appreciated by the ancients.”

The American Sycamore is indeed a beautiful tree, and Riverview Cemetery has a number of specimens on the grounds.

Ginkgo biloba, or the Maidenhair Tree

Ginkgo biloba, a colored plate by
Philipp Franz von Siebold and
Joseph Gerhard Zuccarini, published
 in Flora Japonica in 1870

Highly regarded for its unusual foliage and brilliant fall color, the Ginkgo biloba, or the Maidenhair Tree, has been aptly described as an "ancient wonder." They disappeared from fossil records some two-and-one-half million years ago in Europe and seven million years ago in America, and were long thought to be extinct in the wild until two small populations were recently located in southwestern China. They were cultivated in China's temple gardens by monks for thousands of years, however, and were eventually brought to Japan about 800 years ago.

Engelbert Kaempfer, a German physician and botanist in the employ of the Dutch East India Company as a ship's surgeon, first observed the Ginkgo in Japan in 1690. His findings were published in Amoenitatum Exoticarum in 1712 and they provided the first extensive description of Japanese flora.

The tree was introduced to Europe at the Botanic Garden in Utrecht, Netherlands, in 1730, and the Kew Gardens in London in 1754, and later to America by William Hamilton who planted several specimens on the grounds of his country estate "The Woodlands" in Philadelphia in 1784. They were first offered for sale by American nurserymen David and Cuthbert Landreth in their 1811 catalogue as Salisburia adiantifolia, or Japanese Maidenhair Tree.