I think your oaks must be much quicker growers than ours Ken. English Oak and Turkey Oak crawl along in their own time. I have one in the garden grown from an acorn and its hardly moved. This spring it put out a spurt of growth and I thought it was going to rocket but come summer it had stopped and went back to creep mode. Its one reason they're hardly used as bonsai and never recommended as such from seed,you'd be waiting years before it got to trainable age! Maybe its our climate difference that inhibits their growth,I don't know but all the oaks I've met have been snails. There's a saying about oaks,300 years growing,300 years dying.

No, I completely disagree with Resin (pineresin). The leaves (including the bark) in your pictures are 100% definitely typical of Eastern Cottonwood (Populus deltoides) I've looked at them for many years. The leaf pictures in the link you posted toronado3800 (Uconn Cottonwood) could possibly be a misidentified hybrid cottonwood such as (Populus deltoides x Populus nigra) or are very young immature leaves which usually have very small teeth. A mature Eastern Cottonwood usually has larger teeth exactly like your pictures, but how big and the number of teeth vary with the age of the cottonwood, slight genetic variations, and amount of light the leaf gets (less light= larger and smaller/more teeth). And the age of the cottonwood (young cottonwood tree=large leaf with tiny teeth) Mature cottonwood trees in bright light=smaller leaves with larger and less teeth. Also leaf shape can vary, some have more rounded heart shaped leaves, and some are very triangular with a long tip. I know for sure that the cottonwood in your pictures is 100% Eastern Cottonwood (Populus deltoides) by the looks of it. And what reinforces Eastern Cottonwood even more is its location, it's located by lakes in a old forest at Spanish Lake Park, just 1 or 2 miles from the Mississippi river. Take a look at these Eastern Cottonwood pictures below. Here are some more links and info: Eastern Cottonwood Pictures Eastern Cottonwood Pictures National Champion Eastern cottonwood picture Oldest Eastern Cottonwood in the U.S. (309 years old) A little info I read from the book "Natural History of the Chicago Region" by Joel Greenberg. This is a Eastern Cottonwood that was called the Potawatomi Tree, located near Chicago, IL. It was cut down in 1903 due to safely concerns. It was about 130 feet tall, 95 foot branch spread, and a girth of 41 feet. It was said that 30 people could fit inside it. It was thought to be 500 to 600 years old, but I think it was likely 400 to 500 years old. So it would have sprouted around 1430. People once said that a bear made it home for a while. This male Eastern Cottonwood near us is about 100 ft tall with a spread of 80 or 90 ft, and a trunk circumference of 200 inches. I've now got a rooted and growing clone of this huge old cottonwood tree in a pot. They are pretty neat how easy the twigs root in early spring.

The people who planted trees at my Walmart are pretty dumb and were all out for the money. They planted Overcup oaks (Q. lyrata) which are not well adapted here (alkaline soil and water) and they leaf out a month later than everything else. They also planted Live oaks about 5 feet apart from each other then replaced one after someone hit it. Then someone hit the other one. It goes on and on..... Sounds like a failure of land-use regulation and tree standards to me. wrt the elm foto upthread, often what happens with these developers is they slap in the cheapest stock they can get, so not only do you get the extra heat in the parking lot making things tough, you get suboptimal trees being slapped in to compacted soil. Parking lots are one of my pet peeves. Dan

As you are turning, the arc carved by your front wheels is a lot larger than that described by your back wheels. So you need a good deal more space to get parked in the proper position when driving in than when backing in - let your front wheels describe that larger arc mainly in the area of the driving lane, rather than between two cars. Especially if the space is narrow - if you're dealing with narrow spaces, all the more reason to go to the slight effort of learning how to back up into a precise space, especially when your mirrors can show where you're going. Whether having driven through a parking space to park facing out in the far space, or having backed into it, I estimate that about 20% of the vehicles in most parking areas around here are parked so that they can drive out, rather than back out. As for overhanging a sidewalk when having backed into a space ... how much brain power does it take to remember how much difference there is between the overhang at the front or the back wheels? And when you leave the car, check whether you're overhanging a sidewalk ... and if you are, climb back in and move the darn thing! You'll only have to do that once or twice to learn where to stop. We don`t have angled spots in major parking lots around here, and traffic beside the parking spaces can be in either direction. As far as I can see, when I`m driving out of a spot, I have a lot more visibility than when backing out, especially if next to a large vehicle. For both oncoming vehicles and pedestrians ... and let`s not forget how many of the walkers are engrossed in those little thingies that seem glued to their hands - that light up on one side, you know? But if you hit one - would they want to admit that they were so engrossed in reading or texting ... that they weren't watching where they were going? As for putting at risk someone who may be approaching the far space, expecting to park there ... ... you do have eyes, don't you? Haven't you been taught from an early age to watch where you're going? (And hasn't s/he?) And anyone who hotshots while driving wherever in a parking lot ... ... could be called a jackass? (Especially when backing up, semi-blindly). Just my partially/more or less humble opinion. ole joyful