Unfinished tombstones

When I was searching through Weston Cemetery looking for statues, I notice a number of unfinished tombstones. They were all in the older section and some of them were very large, like the Davisson tombstone that is near the bridge.
Some were mostly unfinished, like the very large Baker marker which has only a corner finished.
Others were merely large, not very large. Some had only a bit of carving left to do, like the York marker with the very attractive lily decoration.
Why, I wondered, did they do this? Was it because they bought too big a stone and then did not have enough money to finish it? OK--that is a hypothesis that only an economist would make. Other people would think that this unfinished gravestone phenomenon must symbolize something, so I went googling for the symbolism of the unfinished marker. I found a lot of explanations of cemetery symbolism (for example, here, here, and here), with some sources giving different interpretations than others, but did not find the symbolism of these unfinished monuments.
Here is a smaller unfinished marker by a Norway spruce that was toppled right after Christmas by the high winds. There is no real reason to include it except I like the dead tree behind it.
I even found one of these out in Mount Calvary Cemetery, and it was clearly carved to look unfinished, which undercuts my hypothesis that it was all about running out of money.
Maybe someone who reads this post will have an answer. If you know what this is all about, please tell us in the comments.

The larch

Not all conifers make good Christmas trees. Some lose their needles in the winter and several of those can grow in Rensselaer. I found one of them, the tamarack, also know as the larch, at the north end of Sparling Avenue.
This tree was full of tiny cones, and those cones help identify it. In fact, with conifers, the cones are often the easiest way to identify trees. The conifers that lose their needles in winter may be easier to identify in winter than in the summer because the loss of needles eliminates most of the other conifers.
After the big ice storm of December, I noticed another tamarak, this one on Merritt Street on the north edge of town. The little cones open up very quickly when you bring them inside.
This tree on Merritt is next to a couple of white pines, so it should be easy to spot.
There is a big larch on Milroy, but it is an imported larch, not the native American larch. I initially thought it was a tamarack, but the December weather brought down some of its branches, and I was able to see the cones. They are much bigger than those of the native tree, as the picture below shows. European and Japanese larch trees are commonly planted in the U.S. I am not sure which this tree is.
The larch.

Christmas tree week: red cedar

Red cedar is another of the conifers that is quite easy to identify because it does not have needles. I was surprised to find that it is a fairly common Christmas tree because I have never seen it for sale and it seems to me to be wrong for a Christmas tree. It is too prickly.

There are a quite a few small red cedar trees around Rensselaer. Here are a couple that are on Melville Street.
Here is a bigger one on Angelica and Webster. Its shape is a bit distorted by ice. It is the largest one I have found in Rensselaer.
Two are growing next to the Carnegie Center.
This closeup of the red cedar probably does not help much with identification, but I think it is rather pretty. I took the picture on Vine Street. Can you guess when I took it?This is a more useful illustration of its leaves.
The red cedar is not closely related to the white cedar. It is a juniper. Unlike the other conifers, it does not have cones, but its seeds are in small blue berries.

Christmas tree week: Douglas fir

When I first saw the cones of this tree near Halleck Center at Saint Joseph's College, I did not know what kind of tree it was. I searched the books and eventually decided it must be a Douglas fir because no other conifer has a cone like it. It is not native to this area, but comes from the western United States where it is an important tree for the lumber industry.
The Douglas firs by Halleck are fairly small. I found a much bigger example on the corner of Susan and Cullen.
A rather strange example is near the intersection of Home Ave and Washington St., near Milroy Park. It has three heads so is hard to miss, and it looks not at all like the tree above. Perhaps the biggest example in Rensselaer is a block south, but it is far from the sidewalk. I would not have recognized it except that the December tree-wrecking weather brought down some branches and they were on the curb.
I cannot identify this tree except by its cone--for me the needles look like the spruce that grow here. And yes, the Douglas fir is widely used as a Christmas tree.

Have a happy New Year.

Christmas tree week: eastern hemlock

The eastern hemlock is native to our area, but not a common tree in Rensselaer. The best examples that I have found are in Weston Cemetery near the Makeever grave.
The eastern hemlock has very small cones that are quite similar to those of the tamarck. It has limited commercial use for lumber, but its bark was once used as a source of tannin.
A Yale University site says, "It is a poor Christmas tree because the leaves fall upon dying."

I prepared this post before Christmas. Rensselaer had a severe windstorm after Christmas that knocked the top off one of the two eastern hemlocks in Weston Cemetery. Here is all that is left of it.
I have found several hemlock on the south side of Milroy Avenue. Do you know where any others are in Rensselaer?