You, Me, and Your Favorite Tree
The series of Interesting Trees of Lawrence blogs that we (LPL staffers Dan and Jake, and lately District Forester EJ Jamison) have been writing for years has always been not just about tree I.D., but also about telling tree stories and promoting tree books. Now the Lawrence Public Library and the Kansas Forest Service invite you to contribute to An Evening with LawrEnts, a community-wide gathering devoted to Lawrence tree stories, to be held in the library auditorium on Saturday, August 1 at 3 PM. All ages are welcome to come celebrate your favorite tree, whether it's a sycamore in South Park, your backyard black oak tree, or the maple tree in front of your office. We want to feature Lawrence trees through the eyes of the people who love and care about them! If you'd like to submit a photo for us to project on the big screen, or bring a tree-inspired artwork to show, let us know using this form, or just show up to listen to and/or share stories of your favorite trees.
EJ
The idea for this event came from my time living in Burlington, VT, where a community group hosted an annual Awesome Trees Contest. The contest culminated in a super fun evening where people gathered to celebrate the trees that keep the city beautiful, cool, and resilient. At An Evening with LawrEnts, tree lovers in Lawrence will highlight local trees that are important to themselves and the community. Whether it be through a photo, story, poem, painting, or sculpture, we’re excited to see how trees have impacted or inspired you!
Jake
In our blogs, we usually take note of trees we see around town, then banter about why they look the way they do, or how they may have gotten there, or what have you. To better identify what we're talking about to readers, we mention their species and some ecological or historic background, highlight some books, and maybe throw around some botanical nomenclature because some of us think it's fun. In the spirit of An Evening with LawrEnts, this time we're doing something a little different, and presenting a few of our personal favorites!
EJ
I’ll admit it. “What is your favorite tree?” has become one of my least favorite questions. So many trees! So many criteria! But I’m not one to take the easy way out and give a non-committal answer about how all trees are my favorite *rolls eyes*. So, when considering my favorite trees in Lawrence, I thought about trees I have relationships with.
One of my go-to lazy morning activities in town is wandering around Oak Hill Cemetery — iced coffee in hand. It’s an incredible place for both tree and bird watching, but I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t the massive bur oak trees that garner most of my attention. Their open crowns and sprawling branches are reminiscent of savanna ecosystems that dot the tallgrass prairie landscape. Tucked in among the monster oaks are a few smaller ones, including one I helped plant with the Great Plains Society of American Foresters in 2023. As a group of foresters in Kansas and Nebraska, we plant a bur oak tree every year during our annual fall meeting and designate it with a small plaque. There are dozens of these trees scattered across Kansas and Nebraska! Today, the tree I helped plant stands about 7 feet tall and seems to be thriving. I like to imagine that 100 years from now it will be as large as the mature oaks that currently fill the canopy.
Jake
Some years ago, the library (that is, yours truly) started offering tree tours at Watson Park, aka the Train Park. We've walked among our neighboring trees in hot weather and cold, in spring as the leaves come out, and in winter when the leaves have fallen — a real tree I.D. challenge! The group may be but a few or more than twenty. Though the trees remain the same (for the most part — there have been deaths, removals, and new plantings), there are always new things to discover and talk about.
At one of our recent walks, a participant was eager to introduce us to her friend George. To our surprise, George, who was standing in the sun right where she said he would be, fairly beamed upon us, seemingly pleased to make our acquaintance.
George is an oak tree.
Look around the park, and you may meet him too, on a rise facing east. Scars (compartmentalization of decay, but that's a topic for another blog) from where branches were long ago cut off mark his eyes and his smile, and make you wonder who else you've missed as you've walked around and among LawrEnts. Perhaps you've met another tree like George! If so, now is the perfect time to share your story.
Dan
In choosing my favorite tree, I thought about many I’ve admired over the years for their unusual qualities — size, shape, age, rarity — but my heart always went back to one as plain as they come, the pin oak in my front yard. My house was built in the mid-1950s, and I suspect this tree was planted as a sapling then. A little research tells me that the pin oak (Quercus palustris) is a common landscaping tree that prefers swampy, acidic soils (sounds like my yard), and has a lifespan of around 120 years.
This puts ours around 70 years old, slightly over the hill but hopefully with many good years ahead — a lot like myself. This is a relief because, while I don’t often think about how much I love this tree, I can't imagine life without it. We’ve lived in our house for 21 years, and all the while this tree has stood sentinel over everything happening here: our excitement to move in, the arrival of two kids, numerous family dogs and cats napping in its shade or climbing it. Various swings have hung from its limbs on long ropes, which the kids and their friends have swung from, sometimes hollering, other times in quiet contemplation. Each fall, we raked its prodigious leaves into a huge pile for the kids to jump into from the top of our front-yard picnic table.
Our pin oak has played an important part in the lives of other species, as well. The tree is a favorite of squirrels and a perch for common yard birds like cardinals, crows, robins, and blue jays, but it also hosts an occasional yellow warbler in the spring, annual summering gray catbird pairs, a Baltimore oriole or two just passing through, and great crested flycatchers calling from high in its canopy. One fall I happened across a large, green caterpillar crawling down its trunk, which the kids and I put in a small terrarium with some leaves. It made a cocoon, and the following spring an enormous polyphemus moth emerged.
I could go on and on with more memories and nostalgia about this tree, but I’ll spare you. Suffice it to say, our pin oak is just one of those trees you get to know over a long period of time as it projects a quiet benevolence over everything it shades. In my work at the library, I occasionally come across children’s books which capture this feeling by depicting relationships between families and their special trees, and here are a few of my favorites.
The Seasons of Arnold's Apple Tree
Jake
I plan on talking about a particular favorite tree at our Evening with LawrEnts event, but, if I may, here's another favorite: the persimmon, Diospyros virginiana.
Though they grow through much of the eastern U.S., I had never encountered one until I moved to Lawrence. A wintery walk near Clinton Lake is where I first discovered — and ate — native persimmon fruits, and not long after that I found an old-growth specimen near Black Jack Battlefield with blocky, corky bark that blew me away. But since we're looking for particular Lawrence trees, check out the famous Strong Hall persimmon at KU.
I've now eaten many persimmons and discovered in the process that all one has to do to start a persimmon grove is spit out the seeds.
A couple warnings, though: wait until after the first frost, at least, to eat a fresh persimmon, or you'll be sorry. The skin of immature fruits is so astringent that you'll curse them roundly — or at least try to, as you spit and sputter for the next 10 minutes. Additionally, the trees spread by runners and can take over your yard.
But I still like them.
By the way, there's a young persimmon tree on the east side of the library. It's a hybrid of native and non-native varieties, but you'll get the idea. The hybrid vigor is probably what caused the recent upheaval in the sidewalk. JUST KIDDING.
EJ
Next month, the Kansas Forest Service book club will be discussing Pawpaw: In Search of America’s Forgotten Fruit. The pawpaw is the largest edible fruit native to the US, and it tastes like a cross between a banana and a mango. You can find the small tree growing in riparian forests all over eastern Kansas! I haven’t finished the book yet, but I’m excited to learn more about the ecological and cultural impacts of this unique plant. Tune in via Zoom on Wednesday, August 26 at 12 PM to discuss the book with our Southcentral District Forester, Chris Mullins. Sign up for book club notifications on our website. Happy reading!
—EJ Jamison is the Kansas Forest Service's District Forester for northeast Kansas. Jake Vail is an Information Services Assistant, and Dan Coleman is a Senior Collection Development Librarian at Lawrence Public Library.
Photo credits: EJ Jamison (bur oaks); Dan Coleman (pin oak, persimmon); Jake Vail (George).
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