County Trees Gather Fans Word of mouth spreads the news on large specimens Monday, August 20, 2001 By Dave Tobin You won't find this roadside attraction on any tourist map, but Laurie and Paul Levesque have a big one. The Levesques live at North Main Street and Oak Hill Road in Moravia. In their yard is an Eastern Cottonwood tree that dwarfs just about anything put or parked near it. Its circumference is 342 inches - 28½ feet. "It would break the road if that came down in the street," said Steve Davison, a state Department of Environmental Conservation forester in Cortland. Gawkers stop regularly. "There's a pretty constant flow of people," said Laurie Levesque. "People get their picture taken near it. And when a branch falls, it's the size of (other) trees." Cayuga County has some very big trees. Some unusual ones. Some trees with stories. Learning about them is a sleuth's game. There is no current tree inventory for Auburn or Cayuga County, no record of the biggest or most exotic trees. There are only tree lovers who keep their own mental inventories, who share tree locations with others who have become self-appointed caretakers of trees, sometimes standing up to road builders for the sake of a tree. "Leaves rustling in the wind is my favorite sound in nature," said Walt Aikman, an Auburn resident who knows some trees, and also has a degree in forestry. "I like it better than the sound of the ocean hitting the beach." New York state last conducted a big tree inventory in 1972. At the time, two trees in Cayuga County were listed - a Kentucky coffee tree (the state champion coffee tree) on the grounds of the First United Methodist Church on South Street in Auburn, and a bald cypress in Moravia. On the grounds of the former Auburn Theological Seminary, some exotic and ornamental trees still stand. The seminary closed in 1939, the property was carved up and most of the buildings were torn down. But some trees remain on former seminary property, like the unusual weeping beech on the north side of Schwartz Towers in Auburn. The tree has waxy leaves, thick, gnarly branches and bark that looks like elephant skin, filled with carvings from the seminary era. Dick Baran, maintenance man at Schwartz Towers, said when the apartment complex was being built in the early 1970s, the weeping beech was slated for removal. "Then some resident from Seymour Street came over and raised holy hell," said Baran. "They went around it with a retaining wall." For an ornamental tree, the weeping beech is big, roughly 41 feet high, with an 87-inch circumference, and a crown of some 40 feet. Around historic sites, trees can be a factor that is considered in a State Environmental Quality Review, said Allen James, a spokesman for the state Department of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation. They don't necessarily need to be big. "If you have something that's deemed a historic house and trees line the road along it, and the state DOT wants to expand a road, that might spark a review," James said. Willard Chapel, the last remaining building of the seminary, has a big burr oak by its driveway - 138 inches in circumference, roughly 78 feet high, with a crown of some 100 feet. Behind the chapel is a European larch, a graceful, feathery tree, 100 inches in circumference, large for its species. Like most northeastern cities, many Cayuga County roads and Auburn streets in the early 20th century were lined with American elms, stately and long-lived trees that shaded sidewalks and roads. Dutch elm disease virtually wiped out the species by the 1960s, and streetscapes have never been the same. But some grand trees of other species still remain. Some large oaks and a buttonwood border South Street. Before South Street was rebuilt last year, original plans called for a 40-foot width, which would have eliminated some trees and damaged others, said Mike Long, a city planner. Planners designed the road at 36 feet wide to save the trees. Oaks can also be found along North Street in Auburn. The city's first cemetery, on North Street, is home to a mammoth northern red oak. The tree is 250 inches in circumference, about 138 feet high, with a crown of some 150 feet. Trees in cemeteries, yards, and other domesticated, open settings usually grow the biggest, said Davison. They benefit from getting more sunlight than forest trees, and sometimes more water and a little fertilizer. But that doesn't mean they make good lumber. "A lot of times they have a lot of hardware in them, " said Davison. "People have had swings and hammocks hanging from them, signs nailed to them. They don't stack up with forest trees. They don't have the height or the clear wood. And they can be hard to take down. The juice just isn't worth the squeeze." St. Joseph Cemetery in Auburn budgets several hundred dollars a year to fertilize two white oaks there, said Mitch Fanning, cemetery administrator. The oaks grow near Sand Beach Road and have lightning rods to protect them. One measures 201 inches in circumference and 70 feet tall; the other has a 219-inch circumference and is 86 feet tall. "They're not just an asset, they're a natural resource and we want to keep them around as long as we can," said Fanning. Behind the Cayuga Museum of History and Art in Auburn grows a large ginkgo - "the largest I've ever seen," said Aikman. The tree has a 168-inch circumference, a height of roughly 64 feet and a crown of roughly 70 feet. The tree has fan-shaped leaves, and is one of the few species where sex matters to the tree's owner. Female ginkgo trees produce a foul-smelling fruit. The males don't. The museum's ginkgo is a male. And lastly, just north of Aurora along Route 90 is a big, northern red oak. The highway curves around it, because of the tree and the people who have defended it, said Ralph McDonnell, who lives in the house behind it. The tree has a huge burl on its trunk, which contributes to its 280-inch circumference. Its height is roughly 74 feet, and its crown stretches nearly 120 feet. McDonnell said that until the 1920s, the road to Aurora came up his driveway, then turned toward the village. Highway builders wanted to put Route 90 straight through, without a turn, and that meant taking out the oak. Edith Morgan, granddaughter of E.B. Morgan, the former congressman, philanthropist and chief benefactor of Wells College, went to the state legislature to save the tree. "That's why you have that horrible curve there, which frightens me to death," said McDonnell. "I can't see in either direction coming out of my driveway." But that didn't stop McDonnell from coming to the tree's defense about 15 years ago, when the road was being worked on, and the tree was again slated for removal. "I went to the foreman and raised hell about it," he said. © 2001 The Syracuse Newspapers. Used with permission.