Affection for Plant Takes Root : A Tree’s Death Is Mourned Much as That of Any Loved One

Whether it is the historic Treaty Oak in its own park in Austin, Tex., or the beloved middle oak in Kathleen Partridge’s front yard in Washington, dying trees take their toll in more than lost leaves, limbs and wood.

“Those three oaks have been my life. Don’t make me cry,” Partridge says as she proudly shows off the towering trees she has nurtured for almost 40 years.

The two oaks at either end of the yard still soar nearly 100 feet. One is more than 200 years old. “Think of it,” she said.

A brutal summer storm of lightning and rare bursts of wind took the top off the middle oak. All that’s left is part of the ramrod-straight trunk and two lonely limbs poking skyward.

“This is the tree I’d come out and hug,” she said, putting her arms around it, wishing she could give it some of the strength it had given her during stressful times.

Years ago, as the mother of four young children, “I’d come out on a moonlit night and lean up against this tree,” she said. “I’d draw my strength from it.”

Now some say it’s ugly and should be chopped down. “Would you give away a child because it’s ugly?” Partridge asks. “You’d love it anyway.” She prays the deformed oak will live.

An estimated 3,000 trees died in the Washington area in the June storm, the region’s greatest tree devastation in decades. Some of the older neighborhoods were among the hardest hit. The average age of the destroyed trees was 80, but some were as old as the capital city itself.

“Urban trees have a tough environment in which to survive,” said Willard R. Tikkala of the American Forestry Assn. Besides the overall stress of population and pollution, tree roots are often whacked off to make way for sidewalks, curbs, streets or landscaping designs.

A big tree growing in a small place is like a pot-bound plant. Its roots cannot always provide stability. Even some of the tallest trees have relatively shallow roots. In the case of this storm, the situation was exacerbated by months of above-average rainfall that had softened the soil.

“Trees standing in wet soil are like you standing on a bog, trying to keep your balance with the ground moving under you,” Gary A. Moll of the forestry association told National Geographic. “Trees can lose their ability to hold on.”

Trees’ Death Mourned

In nearby Bethesda, Md., eight big oaks and maples in Frances Marsh’s front and back yards could not hold on. They toppled every which way, missing the house only by some miracle.

“When I opened the front door afterward, I was in a state of shock. I couldn’t move,” Marsh said. “I’d never seen such devastation. It was something I just couldn’t comprehend.

“It was the most depressing thing in the world. I hadn’t felt that way since my husband died nine years ago. I grieved for those trees for a week.”

Two months later, she still mourns them. She and her husband had chosen this one-acre lot on a countrylike road in 1953 as the site for their house because of its majestic trees, especially the oaks. When the road became a thoroughfare, the front trees shielded the house from traffic. The house stands naked now. For the first time, Marsh said, there is trouble with glare.

Every year, millions of trees become victims of windstorms, ice storms, hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, fires, droughts, diseases and developers.

Some are even the victims of a death intended for them in particular.

In Austin, lethal doses of poison were poured around the city’s 400-year-old Treaty Oak. A drifter has been arrested in connection with the incident.

The venerated tree, site of a legendary Indian treaty-signing, is on life-support systems. Fresh earth has replaced the contaminated soil, a neutralizing agent has been injected into the roots, burlap bandages now protect the leafless limbs, and sprinklers cool the surface with spring water trucked in from west Texas. A large screen has been erected to shield it from the hot sun.

“If we can nurse it through this summer, we have some hope of saving it,” said John Giedraitis, the city forester who proposed to his wife under the tree’s canopy. “It’s a race between the poison and the tree,” he said. “Even if the tree wins, it will never be the magnificent specimen it was.” Its fate may not be known until next spring.

Meanwhile, the oak has been the recipient of well wishes from as far away as Tokyo. Someone even brought it cans of chicken soup.

“It’s the most famous tree in the world right now,” Giedraitis said. “It’s become a symbol of the plight of man and his environment.”

All that affection, he thinks, is really what is keeping the oak alive.