Taking a bough

By David Maurer

Published: October 12, 2008

Among the estimated 172 million trees in Albemarle County, the Earlysville Oak is royalty.

It’s the second largest white oak in Virginia, and when it was first setting its roots the nation was just starting to grow as well. From its position near Earlysville Road it has seen oxen drawn wagons evolve into fume-belching vehicles, and then aircraft join the birds flying above its spreading crown.

The regal tree has seen the Rivanna Post Office come and go and, for generations, felt the grip of tiny hands climbing and clinging to its boughs. Now it stands alone in the approach lane to the Charlottesville-Albemarle Airport, a venerable symbol of the community’s love for this special tree.

“The story as I understand it is that they had to extend the apron of the airport’s runway, so the [Federal Aviation Administration] said the tree had to go,” said Robert Llewellyn, who as a professional photographer has been photographing Virginia’s landscape, as well as its people and historic places, for nearly 40 years.

“Then the community came together and said, ‘No, we want to save this tree,’ and for the moment, it is saved. It’s a unique tree. The base of it is flared, which is very unusual

for an oak to have that much flare at the bottom.

“It’s also like a ‘Lord of the Rings’ tree, in that it’s very mystical looking. That’s why I photographed it in the fog.”

Two color photographs of the Earlysville Oak appear in the just released coffee-table book, “Remarkable Trees of Virginia.” Published by the University of Virginia Press, the book celebrates in text and Llewellyn’s color photographs more than 100 trees that for a variety of reasons stand out from the estimated 12 billion trees growing in the state.

There are the obvious categories such as the oldest — that would be the baldcypress trees in the Blackwater Swamp, which are more than 800 years old. Tallest — a 160-foot white pine growing in Augusta County.

Also included are historic trees such as the Emancipation Oak on the campus of Hampton University. It’s widely believed that it was beneath this tree in 1863 that a Union soldier read the Emancipation Proclamation to a group of slaves and free blacks.

It’s possible that this was the first time Abraham Lincoln’s edict that freed the slaves was publicly read on Southern soil. Unfortunately, because of a loophole in the wording, the slaves who heard the reading wouldn’t be officially freed until the passage of the 13th Amendment in 1865.

Community trees, such as a towering sugar maple in Sperryville and the Chinquapin Oak in Luray, also are celebrated. For sheer beauty a nestle of dazzling eastern redbud that provided a spring splash of brilliant lavender color along a curve on Route 626 in Albemarle County was also included.

So too an American sycamore tree flourishing in a schoolyard in Hampton that was grown from a seed taken to the moon. Also getting an affirmative nod were the stout branches of an American beech tree in Patrick County that NASCAR greats Glen and Leonard Wood once used to hoist engines in and out of their race cars.

Nancy Ross Hugo came up with the idea for the book several years ago and wrote most of the text. The outdoor writer and lecturer didn’t make it easy on herself.

“At first everybody kept saying: Why don’t you just do big trees, because that would have been so easy,” said Hugo, who makes her home in Ashland. “But I think the way we did it makes the book much richer.

“I sort of got pulled into a tree interest when I was teaching high school, and read somewhere about the biggest tree in Virginia. At that time it was the Bedford tulip poplar. I took a day off and drove all the way out there by myself to see it.

“Back then it was something of a trek to get to it, and I had to follow some directions into the woods and down a hill. But part of the joy of a tree search is having to do a little searching.”

Whatever difficulties Hugo had getting to what was then the largest tulip-poplar in the country, were worth the effort. When she laid eyes on the massive tree it filled her with wonder.

“Seeing that tree really was life changing for me,” said Hugo, whose articles have appeared in publications such as Fine Gardening, American Forests and Country Journal. “It was probably the most impressive living thing I had ever encountered.

“And here it was unheralded, just a quarter mile behind some houses. It seemed impossible to me that people could be trekking to theme parks and missing these huge living things in the woods.

“So often we just don’t see trees. I really like an American beech tree in Falls Church that is very close to a busy highway. It’s astonishing to think how many people drive by and aren’t aware of it.”

Hugo said one of the things she hopes the book does is bring trees from the background into the foreground of peoples’ consciousness. With so many trees in the state, it was necessary to call on the help of all the citizens to identify those worthy of inclusion in the book.

In 2004 Hugo and Jeff Kirwan, a professor in the forestry department at Virginia Tech, started the Remarkable Trees of Virginia project. Kirwan created a Web site where people could nominate their favorite trees.

The response greatly exceeded anyone’s expectations. More than a thousand nominations were made, and it fell to Kirwan to winnow it down to a workable 100 or so.

To do that the forestry professor traveled more than 20,000 miles, at least 300 of them on foot, to see the trees. When the trees were selected it was Hugo’s task to write about each of them, and Llewellyn’s job to capture something of their essence in photographs.

“The problem with photographing trees, especially large trees, is that it’s hard to get the feeling of the size and scale without something else in the photograph like a person to give some sense of proportion,” Llewellyn said.

“Even then you can look at the photographs in the book and say, ‘Wow, that’s really an amazing tree,’ but it’s nowhere near as amazing as standing under it. So I really encourage people to go see those trees that call out to them, and spend some time in their presence.

“I think when you learn about trees it changes how you see them. I used to do a lot of landscape photography, and I would see trees as elements. Now, after being with all these great trees, I see they’re living beings.”

A handful of the trees profiled in the book weren’t nominated, but discovered while tracking down some that were. Because there were so many trees nominated those chosen for inclusion in the book had to be off-the-chart special in one way or another.

“When we’d come around a corner and see the tree and it made us go, ‘Wow,’ then the tree would be in the book,” said Llewellyn, who has had more than 30 books featuring his photographs published. “Sometimes it was a double wow.

“Then I’d try to see what it was about that tree that made me go ‘wow.’ Sometimes it’s the size, sometimes it’s the branches or the way the light hits it.

“Storms and clouds really work better when photographing trees than a bright sunny day. I would look for bad weather. I shot the Emancipation Oak during a nor’easter with 50 mph winds and rain.”

While Llewellyn was getting memorable pictures, Hugo was gathering information about the trees. An example is the champion serviceberry tree in Burke’s Garden.

The author tells the legend of the serviceberry, which is among the first trees to bloom in the spring. The story goes that when its white blossoms appeared, they served as a signal for traveling ministers that the mountain roads were again accessible and rural church services could start again.

Another story is about two catalpa trees in Chatham. They had already been well established by the time of the Civil War.

“The trees are outside an estate that was used as a hospital during the Civil War,” Llewellyn said. “Walt Whitman went there to find his brother and wrote about it in a book [“The Wound Dresser”].

“He said he arrived at the hospital and outside the front, beside these two catalpa trees, was a pile of arms and legs that had been amputated. When I looked at those trees it looked to me like a pile of arms and legs.

“No other catalpa I know of looks like that.”

The book is also replete with general tree facts, such as that they first appeared on Earth about 400 million years ago. Hugo believes trees are “history written in wood,” but finds that words fall short when trying to describe the visceral connection she feels with them.

“I truly find my connection to trees inexpressible,” said Hugo, who was a columnist for the Richmond Times-Dispatch and is the author of a book of collected essays titled “Earth Works: Readings for Backyard Gardeners.”

“Metaphorically, I like the idea of a tree standing on one site for so long in such a stalwart way. I love that, but it doesn’t account for why I just like standing beside one.

“I think it’s because trees take you to the place where words don’t count.”

The final page of the book holds one of its most beautiful and endearing photographs. It shows a little girl with closed eyes hugging the gargantuan trunk of a tulip-poplar in Maymont Park in Richmond.

Neither posed nor encouraged, the child was simply expressing her feelings for the tree.

“The cover of the book is from that same shoot in Maymont,” Llewellyn said, referring to a picture of a young boy with a stick romping around the same stately tree. “We actually got school kids to come, and we let them play around the tree and do whatever they wanted.

“The little girl just went over to the tree and hugged it. Kids are great that way. They really get that a tree is a living thing.”

“Remarkable Trees of Virginia” retails for about $40 and is available in local bookstores.

Other remarkable trees can be nominated by going to www. cnr.vt.edu/4h/remarkabletree/.