In transit today, but here’s a small taste of Rice’s more tropical past—Cohen House, c 1930s:
Bring back the palm trees! We can all sip rum punches in the garden.
In transit today, but here’s a small taste of Rice’s more tropical past—Cohen House, c 1930s:
Bring back the palm trees! We can all sip rum punches in the garden.
Palm trees were included in some of the earliest landscape concepts envisioned for the Rice Insititute. “Hedge-lined paths bordered by a variety of palm trees” were shown in a 1911 “Basic Rice Style” rendering of the planned dormitories. (Source: Figure 29 (on p. 29) and descriptive text (on p. 30) in Stephen Fox’s 1980 Architecture at Rice series Monograph 29: “The General Plan of the William M. Rice Institute and Its Architectural Development.” https://scholarship.rice.edu/bitstream/handle/1911/35961/generalplanofwil00foxs.pdf )
A few palm trees would be nice. Besides the oaks, what other trees are there on campus now?
Rice’s Lynn R. Lowery Arboretum and the Plant Diversity class (BIOS 336) has created a detailed, interactive campus tree map: http://fon-gis.rice.edu/ricetrees/Default.aspx There’s a “Map Identify” icon that has species and other information on a few — but not nearly all — of the trees. (I hope they’re working to complete this feature.) Chinese elm, Crepe Myrtle and Italian Cypress are three non-oak species I found in a quick look around the RMC portion of the map.
Note: It’s also hard (impossible?) to tell whether a plant on the map is a tree or a shrub (such as azalea) … and moving your cursor just a few pixels within a graphic may turn a “No Features Found” message into a full description … something I hope they’re also planning to improve.
Almadenmike, thanks.