Black walnuts in Oakville

On August 9th, I noticed large green balls on the tennis courts at Maplegrove Arena in Oakville.  At first, I thought they were crab apples, upon looking up, I saw that they came from the black walnut trees beside the tennis courts.  I thought these were ash trees by the type of leaves on them, but searching for images of the fruit revealed that they were black walnuts.

I saw several reports about the emerald ash borer in the Oakville Beaver, and now they add the Asian longhorned beetle to the fray of invasive insects that have arrived in Oakville.  The EAB has devasted ash trees and it's too bad that such majestic stands of ash have been destroyed.  I noticed that I see more gingko trees being planted as street tress these days.  I noticed some in Etobicoke on the way to a friend's house and saw others in Oakville as well.  I guess this living fossil is resistant to pests for a reason!

On August 1st, I saw this tree in Stratford that I thought was an arbutus, but it probably isn't an arbutus which is common in BC's Lower Mainland.  I didn't realise that arbutus trees are the only broad leafed evergreens in Canada.  Upon further research, I think this is actually a paper bark maple.

That's what I love about Ontario - there are so many different kinds of trees compared to the prairies!  However, the Tree Atlas of Ontario now lists some of my favorite trees as not desirable because they are non-native species.  The European horse chestnut is among them!  I love it's white flowers in June.  That's why I planted my Ohio Buckeye (which can survive Saskatoon winters).  I suppose the pyramidal English Oak would also be an undesirable.  I admired these trees in the court yard at New College at U of T as an undergrad.  My dad's neighbor has them and one of the acorns from their English oaks dropped in our yard and grew into an English oak that is now about 6' tall.