Just as pets resemble their owners, the 5.2 million trees that manage to survive in Manhattan and its boroughs closely echo the mad mix of humanity that calls the metropolis home. Some are young and struggling, some tall and far reaching, quite a few are drop-dead gorgeous, many have been around seemingly forever, most are anonymous. And all have stories to tell. Having you been listening?

Fortunately, writer, photographer, and former parks employee Benjamin Swett has. For his new book, New York City of Trees, Swett roamed the city, from the Bronx to Washington Square Park to Staten Island, and from garden to sidewalk to highway median, photographing and chronicling the stories behind some of New York’s wildest and most stalwart residents.

Photographs by Benjamin Swett.

Above: This tulip tree, the tallest tree in Queens, overlooks six lanes of traffic on the Long Island Expressway. After comparing the tree’s measurements with those from a 1943 park map, Swett discussed its “balding bark and narrow, dense crown” with a specialist at Columbia University’s Tree Ring Lab and surmises it could be 168 years old.

Above; Swett wasn’t fixed on merely finding out the age of the 50 or so trees he investigated; he wanted to celebrate their connection to New York history and the impact trees have on those who live in their midst.

“We know that trees improve living conditions in cities by filtering and cooling the air, absorbing excess rainwater, and making neighborhoods more attractive,” he writes. “But little has been said about the importance of trees as keepers of a city’s past. The aim in taking these pictures–aside from taking the best photographs I could–was to try to bring back into focus an aspect of the city that most people tend to take for granted until something happens to it. The idea has been to remind New Yorkers how much of their own lives and the lives of neighbors these trees quietly contain.”

He photographed this Yoshino cherry, one of 27 specimens that form a double row along the east side of the Central Park Reservoir, early in the morning “before the sun had a chance to introduce its fatal yellows.” It arrived in 1912, he tells us, as part of a gift of 2,000 cherry trees to the city from the city of Tokyo, and was a replacement for an earlier shipment, to celebrate the 300th anniversary of Henry Hudson’s exploration of the Hudson, that was entirely lost at sea.

Above: “As everyone knows, the tree of heaven is a weed tree, a vicious invasive that would take root in a soda can if given the opportunity,” writes Swett. “Just the sight of it, in many people’s minds, breeds thoughts of insurrection against the urban grid.”

Ailanthus, as its properly known, was introduced, he notes, as an ornamental from China in 1784 and is now the most common tree in New York. These specimens sprouted in “classic ailanthus territory,” in a forgotten spot under an abandoned railroad track. Eight months later, Swett returned and found them missing. Just weeks before the photo was taken, he later learned, the city council had voted to turn the defunct railroad track into a park. It’s now part of the thriving and much-copied High Line, which features sophisticated plantings that evoke the look of the tracks when they were long abandoned.

Above: A flourishing Chinese Maidenhair ginkgo overlooks Broadway along the southeast corner of Isham Park, in Inwood. First imported from China as specimen trees for parks and estates, the species, Swett explains, exhibited great hardiness, and soon became a favorite for not-very-hospitable city streets. “Building superintendents love them,” he notes, “because in the fall their leaves drop all at once, making cleanup easier.”

Swett traces this one’s origins to the late 1860s or 1870s when it was likely planted at the entrance of tanner William B. Isham’s estate, now an urban park with nothing like an estate in the vicinity. It stands on what was the Boston Post Road, the main route to and from Manhattan. If you visit, look for the 18th century marker that Swett says is hidden on the retaining wall beneath it. Part of Ben Franklin’s traffic marker program, it indicates that City Hall is 12 miles away.