A collaborative effort between students, staff and the University administration has resulted in the planned planting of 11 trees on the Hilltop Campus to mark Earth Day 2006.
A ceremony will be held at 2 p.m. April 14 in Brookings Quadrangle, the site of one of the plantings.
“I am pleased with the proactive leadership shown by some of our students on this important environmental issue,” Chancellor Mark S. Wrighton said, “and I’m grateful to our horticulturist Paul Norman for his expertise and wisdom in helping us select trees that will grace our beautiful campus for the next hundred years. This is a wonderful way to mark Earth Day 2006.”
All of the trees to be planted were grown by the University in the property just east of the Brookings Hall parking lot, between Lindell Boulevard and Forest Park Parkway.
Ten Northern Red Oaks will be planted along Forsyth Boulevard, from Olympian Way to the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts. These plantings will occur throughout the day, and signs proclaiming that the trees were planted to mark Earth Day 2006 will be included.
“These are trees that grow well in an urban environment,” Norman said. “They grow to perhaps 60 or 75 feet tall, much like the oaks on the rest of campus.
“And in an urban environment, we can expect them to live about 100 years.”
The Northern Red Oak is easy to recognize by its bark, which features ridges that appear to have shiny stripes down the center. A few other oaks have bark with this kind of appearance in the upper tree, but the Northern Red Oak is the only tree with the striping all the way down the trunk.
One more tree, a Valley Forge Elm, will be planted in the Quad, near a location in several people’s memory.
“The Valley Forge Elm is a disease-resistant elm tree,” Norman said, “and that one will probably go where the other elm tree died.
“This is a hybrid elm tree and resistant to Dutch elm disease. We got it when it was a seedling about as big around as your finger. Now it has about a 3-inch caliper, so it’s ready to be moved.”
An American elm variety, the Valley Forge Elm was released by the U.S.D.A. National Arboretum in 1995 after 20 years of research. In the past 70 years, Dutch elm disease has killed more than 70 million elm trees (95 percent) in the United States.
The tree culminates 60 years of government research, involving three generations of scientists and tests on 60,000 elm trees.