Pair creates map of Central Park's trees

Avid bird-watcher Ken Chaya and his arborist friend Edward S. Barnard have finished creating an exhaustive record of nearly 20,000 trees in Central Park.

"I thought, 'Trees stand still. They don't fly around,' " Chaya said. "But trees change dramatically. They change colors, shed leaves, grow berries through the seasons."

He gestured toward a big-leafed royal Paulownia during a walk in the 843-acre Manhattan park Saturday and gushed, "You've got to see it flower in the spring, it'll blow your mind."

That sense of awe fueled the pair's quest to document almost all of Central Park's trees and shrubs, a consuming task that took 2 1/2 years.

The result is "Central Park Entire," an illustrated map published in May as arguably the most comprehensive tree guide to the park available.

"It was a crazy, obsessive project," said Chaya, 55, a freelance designer who lives on the Upper West Side. "We found new species that even the Central Park Conservancy didn't have records of."

Conservancy officials have conducted just two tree surveys in the park's history, the first in 1996 and the last in 2008, before a massive storm in 2009 doomed about 500 mature trees.

Until now, the city has lacked a comprehensive database of tree species: Its website lists only 15.

In contrast, "Central Park Entire," a 36-inch by 26-inch waterproof map sold for $12.95 at the park's visitors' centers, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and on centralparknature.com, lists more than 170 tree and shrub species.

Chaya and Barnard, 75, the author of "New York City Trees," created the map independent of the park, investing $40,000 into the project, Chaya said. The friends are just now beginning to turn a profit, he said.

The nonprofit Central Park Conservancy eventually offered help in identifying trees and by sharing information on what trees were scheduled to be cut down"once they realized these guys are going for it all," Chaya said. In turn, Chaya and Barnard, who now lives in Philadelphia, are giving the conservancy a small, undisclosed percentage of the profits.

Conservancy president Doug Blonsky has called the map a masterpiece.

Chaya said the map, which includes his renderings of architectural landmarks and previously unmapped woodland trails, is a celebration of Central Park's artful landscape.

"What we hope is that the map makes people more curious about the natural world around us and more appreciative of what a treasure Central Park is," he said.

The map documents the most popular perennials -- the 3,800-plus black cherry trees -- and the least expected one -- a solitary Fraser fir, which Chaya suspects was planted by a mischievous Christmas tree merchant.

The 19,933 mapped trees account for about 89 percent of the park's tree population, which is in constant flux and already has lost about a dozen mature trees since the publication of "Central Park Entire."

During Saturday's walk in the park, Chaya pointed out the stump of a pin oak that had fallen down last month.

"This is an example of the map that will never be done," he said.

"It's a Sisyphean effort."