From further afield than our local species, many plants native to far-flung environments throughout the world also can be found growing at the University of Oregon’s Eugene campus. It’s an apt symbol for our truly global university. According to Jane Brubaker, landscape designer with Campus Planning and Facilities Management, international students often feel grateful to spot a familiar flower or tree thriving in Oregon. “I’ve had students come up to me and say, ‘That plant grows in my country!’” says Brubaker, BLArch ’93, MLA ’95 (landscape architecture). “It’s a neat way of connecting and it helps them feel more at home.”

Purple-Leaf European Beech
Fagus sylvatica 'Atropurpurea'

Appropriately sited near the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art is one of the most “artful” trees on campus. With its rippled gray bark, low-set branches, and leaves amethyst-hued in springtime and coppery in autumn, this magnificent European beech has won a place in the hearts of generations of students. The tree has an admirer in Becket DeChant, arborist with Campus Planning and Facilities Management. “It’s an absolutely tremendous example of that tree type,” he says. “When the leaves first come out in the spring, they’re so tender they’re translucent. The light underneath that tree for those two weeks in April is spectacular.”
 

Dawn Redwood
Metasequoia glyptostroboides

A true living fossil can be found outside Cascade Hall. In fact, dawn redwood is the official fossil of Oregon. These trees were native to our region fifty million years ago but disappeared long before humans arrived. Originally described from fossils, the genus was thought to be extinct until 1944, when living specimens were discovered in a remote, mountainous area of China. In 1947, a Harvard University expedition collected seeds and dispersed them worldwide to arboretums and universities, including the UO. Unusual for a coniferous tree, the dawn redwood is deciduous, shedding its needles each fall.

Flowering Dogwood
Cornus florida

Deciduous trees enrich our landscape with more than just summer shade and fall foliage. Every spring, a vast array of flowering species offers colors and fragrance to further beautify the UO experience. A low-growing native of eastern North America, flowering dogwood graces many views with its large and abundant white bracts. Somewhat less showy but no less treasured, our local Pacific dogwood, Cornus nuttallii, also features around campus, including the grounds of the Many Nations Longhouse. The Pacific dogwood is named “kʰul-sik-lamatsin-stik” in Chinuk Wawa.
 

Port Orford Cedar
Chamaecyparis lawsoniana

Port Orford cedar is popular worldwide as a landscape ornamental, but it faces an uncertain future within its native habitat. The tree’s natural range is restricted to a relatively small area of Northern California and Southern Oregon. Highly prized for its weather-resistant wood, excessive logging had taken a heavy toll by the 1950s and over the past seventy years, an invasive root disease has further decimated its numbers. The cedar growing on the Collier House grounds was most likely collected in the late 1800s by Sybel Collier, one of the first trained female botanists in the country. “She went out in a horse and buggy, collected trees in the wild and transplanted them here,” Brubaker says.

Main story • Northwest Natives • Cherished Gifts and Memorials

Take a Campus Tree Tour! When you’re in Eugene, we invite you to explore the trees that make the University of Oregon special.