Two trees in the aires

Two trees I noticed at places we stopped when driving home through France. Even if you get no further than the aires, as we largely didn't,  there's always plenty to look at. (The previous day I was at Aire de Port Lauragais learning about the jazz singer and poet Claude Nougaro,  the day before at Salses where you can walk to Ferdinand and Isabella's fortress and on to Claude Simon's house, as I've mentioned before.)

The first was on 28 October 2023 at Aire de Le Bazadais, SE of Bordeaux on the A62, and it's a 3-needle pine with heavy smooth cones; I'll go with Monterey Pine (Pinus radiata), widely planted in Europe. Not with any great confidence, but at least that ID isn't obviously wrong, though the bark seems a bit untypical.

I collected two of the closed cones on the ground for Laura's grandson, who enjoys shaking out the seeds. 

Here's the other tree, one of a group that I photographed the following morning, after a night of rain. This was at Aire de Saint-Lèger on the A10, just south of Saintes.

The trees are top-grafted mulberries. The naming of mulberries is a highly confusing topic, but I was greatly helped by finding this excellent article on Trees and Shrubs Online:

https://www.treesandshrubsonline.org/articles/morus/morus-alba/

So I will go with this being the plane-leaved variety of White Mulberry (Morus alba 'Platanifolia'). It looks very different from the white mulberry in Mum and Dad's garden. White Mulberry has many cultivars, unlike the Black Mulberry (Morus nigra), which is renowned for its exceptional genetic stability (presumably honouring Thisbe's request to the gods).

The author of the above article says that Morus alba 'Platanifolia' is widely planted as a shade tree in Europe and is usually top-grafted. Lobed leaves are frequent and are not restricted to the youngest growth, but may also occur on 1- and 2-year-old shoots.