In the meeting packet for the Parks and Recreation Advisory Board on Thursday the 11th are some interesting notes on tree matters.
The proposal to designate the lower Oak Grove at Bush Park is back on. You may recall some discussion back in November. Then it was delayed a little in December for more discussion with Tribes. One of the agenda items for January is:
Endorse staff recommend designation of an approximately 10-acre grove of Quercus garryana (Oregon white oak) in lower Bush’s Pasture Park.
There's no Staff Report or other material, unfortunately. This seems like a pretty obvious case, but it would be nice to learn more about the specific elements and history of the grove that are understood to make it important, and what came out of the conversations with Tribes.
A recent early stage candidate for designation was the cluster of Plane trees at North Salem High School. Parks and Recreation Board members had been making preliminary inquiries. At the December meeting of the Board minutes indicate that the School District signaled disapproval of any designation for the trees. It would be interesting to learn more about their reasons. Maybe drawing attention to the school campus is not welcome, maybe they want to have more flexibility to cut them down at some point. Could be lots of things.
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| One of the Plane Trees at North High (2012) |
A decade ago there were some nesting Sharp-Shinned (or possibly small Cooper's) Hawks in them, and the bird-watching was grand for a season. Maybe there have been more since.
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| April 9th, 1932 |
More than this, the trees have a place in urban parks and landscape history. Also a decade ago, On the Way had a two-part series on Plane trees associated with Lord & Schryver. In landscape plans Lord & Schryver had specified the trees at the Courthouse (planted for the old Courthouse, and retained in the landscaping for the current Courthouse) as well as the trees at North High, both in the 1930s. Six of the seven original trees survive at North.
There might be more of a social and natural history of the Plane Tree plantings in Salem, not just at one site but at multiple sites and over a period of time. They seemed to be popular in the 1930s and associated with L & S. Almost certainly there are other sites where L & S proposed them. Maybe others planted them also.
Interest in them preceded L & S's activity.
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| December 16th, 1923 |
For a two-part series recommending a formal tree planting program in December of 1923, a "landscape gardening" professor at Oregon Agricultural College (now OSU) recommended Plane trees.
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| Three distinct varieties, Sept. 28th, 1930 |
There's also good bit of slippage between "Sycamore" and "Plane" in the period. One contemporary piece identifies a native Sycamore, an Asian Plane tree, and a hybrid of the two, the "London Plane tree," all of which might be called Plane trees. I am not sure it has been made clear what exactly has been planted at North and the Courthouse. The earlier sources seem to call them Sycamores. But writers and even some garden designers might not have been very particular about trying for the precision of taxonomic naming.
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| No Trees! September 30th, 1937 |
At the opening of the school, the landscaping was not yet complete. Interestingly, Lord & Schryver aren't mentioned at all. It's hard to tease out what is sexism towards Lord & Schryver in particular and any more general slighting of landscape design as "gardening." The architecture and building is manly, and Knighton is often named, but the gardening or landscape design, even when done by men, seems to be gendered as feminine and not taken as seriously.
Conversation about trees often gets simplified to canopy coverage with all its benefits and using trees as a way to foil development.
But trees participate in other contexts of meaning.
Recently:
- There remains the question of the Honeysuckle at Union and Cottage. Exactly how old is it, and whether can it truly be linked to some 19th century Federal "beautification" program. This has seemed very doubtful, and it is interesting how attractive a legend has become. "Is there a Heritage Tree on Union and Cottage? Checking in on the Union Street Bikeway."
- A large tree branch failed and killed someone last year. In IOOF Pioneer Cemetery there has been a lot of damage to monuments from failing trees over the last few years. Yet that actual damage is badly underreported in preference to fear-mongering over theoretical damage people might cause in the cemetery. "Loss, Clinging, Regeneration: Tree Care, the Life Cycle, and Art."
Our Strong Towns group is also hosting the Urban Forester as part of their monthly conversation series on Saturday the 13th.
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In a piece this morning at Slate, subtitled, "The London planetree is a symbol of European settlement, biodiversity collapse, and Robert Moses," they level a pretty significant critique of them:
"Oaks, tulip trees, and other native species attract throngs of songbirds, especially in the spring and fall migration seasons. London planetrees do not. While all trees have physical or chemical defenses, insects in New York City haven’t adapted to the planetrees’ fortifications the way they have with native trees, causing cascading effects throughout the food web. This means fewer plant-eating bugs; in turn, fewer bug-eating birds grace these trees. Devoid of most critters, the London planetrees are about as sterile as trees can be....While they do some good, like all trees do, experts say that their negative impacts on biodiversity can’t be ignored."
And tie them to Robert Moses!
"I’d say they’re more like settlers than immigrants, though, brought in to impose a colonizer’s ideals upon the landscape. This was the role of the London plane in Robert Moses’ New York. The pivotal factor in this tree’s spread was how much powerful white men loved the European aesthetic that the preferred street tree of London, Rome, and Paris helped evoke. It was during Moses’ reign over the Department of Parks and Recreation that the planetree was popularized in the city’s parks and streets. Like expressways tearing through low-income neighborhoods, London planes are said to have been a personal favorite of that shrewd tyrant. Moses seemed to love this tree almost as much as he loathed poor New Yorkers, people of color, and public transit. When Moses consolidated the boroughs’ parks departments into a single citywide office in 1934, the new parks department got a now-familiar logo. That leaf, while officially unspecified, seems to depict a London plane."
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