Southern live oak

A tough, widely adaptable native shade tree of central and northeastern North America, growing 40 to 60 feet tall and wide with a rounded, spreading crown. Mature gray bark develops the warty corky ridges that make it instantly recognizable, and the round purple drupes are edible and feed dozens of bird species. One of the most pollution- and stress-tolerant street and shade trees available - it shrugs off wind, urban conditions, and wet, dry, or poor soils alike.

The most widely distributed deciduous tree in eastern North America and one of the few that thrives across a 7,000-foot elevation range from Newfoundland to Florida. Earliest spring bloom of any eastern hardwood (January-March in NC) gives early-emerging bees their first nectar source; brilliant red fall color is the species's headline, but the timing varies tree-to-tree - making cultivars with named selections ('October Glory', 'Red Sunset') the reliable design choice for guaranteed display.

The largest native cherry of eastern North America - a medium-to-large deciduous shade tree that hangs elongated racemes of small white flowers in spring, then ripens drooping strings of pea-sized fruit from red to near-black in late summer. The fragrant white bloom feeds bees while the fruit is eaten by 33 species of birds and many mammals; it is also a workhorse larval host, supporting the Eastern Tiger Swallowtail and a string of giant silk and sphinx moths. Every part except the ripe fruit is cyanide-bearing and toxic.

Silver maple (Acer saccharinum) is a fast, very large deciduous tree of eastern and central North American floodplains, and one of the most widely planted - and most regretted - shade trees on the continent. It earns its name from the silvery-white undersides of its deeply cut leaves, which flash when wind turns them, and it earns its reputation from everything else: it can add three feet a year and reach 50 to 80 feet, but the wood is brittle and sheds limbs in storms, and the shallow roots lift sidewalks, heave lawns and find their way into drain lines. It is also the earliest maple to flower, opening dense red-tinged clusters in late winter well before the leaves, which makes it a genuinely important first nectar and pollen source for bees in a month when almost nothing else is open. Plant it where those trade-offs are acceptable - a big damp low spot, a riverbank, a rural windbreak - and it is superb. Plant it beside a driveway and you will be negotiating with it for decades.