Solebury's 'Columbus Tree' was destroyed in a storm. How the 500-year-old white oaks lives on

I’ve always admired ancient trees. To contemplate the centuries they’ve lived is to be awed.

Recently my neighbor Syd and I calculated the age of a white oak in my backyard by stretching a tape measure around the trunk at 5 feet off the ground, dividing the inches (114) by psi (3.14) and then multiplying that by 5, the growth factor for white oaks. The result: The tree began growing 182 years ago in 1840 when Martin Van Buren was the nation’s eighth president and founder of the Democratic Party. Hmmm.

Giant redwoods are much older of course. They dominate forests of coastal California and the Sierra Mountains near where I grew up. At 350-feet high and more than 3,000 years old, they were alive when the pyramids were built and there was no city of Rome. My sisters and I would stand beside the trunks, dwarfed and in wonder.

For most of the 19th and 20th centuries, Americans viewed redwoods as a source of lumber. I recall our home’s redwood fencing made from sequoias that lived for centuries only to be cut down in a jiff and ripped into planking and beams for carpenters. Post cards of lumberjacks falling sequoias in a single day greatly disturbs me to this day. The images are indicative of mankind’s voracious nature and how demand for resources puts in peril just about anything of value, even if protected under law.

Fortunately for us in Bucks, safeguarding the environment remains important. However, the natural cycle of life can undo that.

Take the story of the “Ziggy Tree.”

Mary Anne and I gave the white oak its moniker in Solebury after I took a photo of her standing beneath the bows of the 500-year-old matriarch a few weeks before the birth of our baby. We didn’t know whether we’d have a boy or a girl. We simply called her/him “Ziggy” beneath the “Ziggy Tree” in the photo.

Back then, it was the centerpiece of a broad, open pasture sloping down to the base of Bowman’s Hill and its stone watchtower. To us the tree epitomized grace, strength and endurance. We engraved the image on invitations to our wedding a few years earlier at Thompson Memorial Presbyterian Church across Aquetong Road from the tree.

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People throughout Bucks knew Ziggy Tree by another name. “Columbus Oak” began life in 1486, about the time Italian explorer Christopher Columbus was discovering the New World. Native Americans and farmers over the centuries revered and protected the tree that produced prodigious harvests of acorns.

Forest monarchs like Columbus Oak survive here and there in Bucks. For instance, Hilltown’s “Penn Oak” on Chalfont Road is one of the last in the county dated to 1682 when William Penn arrived from England to found Pennsylvania. A few years ago, thunderstorms pruned two of its massive bows. An arborist called to the scene assured citizens the tree would survive, despite being somewhat ragged. On our family visit two years ago, granddaughter Margaux, 8, climbed onto the trunk, putting into perspective an ancient life force 340 years old.

Fortune was not so kind to Ziggy Tree. Lightning and old age took her life the summer of 1999, fracturing the trunk and severing all her limbs. People afterwards retrieved mementoes of the great tree. Horticulturalist David Benner, a member of the Solebury Historical Society, grew one of her last acorns into a sapling. In the spring of 2008, he planted it “in the arms” of the mother tree. The Arbor Day ceremony drew a crowd of 80 residents who linked arms around the seedling tucked inside the shattered tree’s root. Lenape Indians led observers in a blessing of the youngster named “Piestewa” after Lori Piestewa, the first female American Indian soldier to die in combat. She was mortally injured in Iraq in 2003.

The local historical society installed a large granite marker beside the tree with a bronze tableau featuring poet Patricia A. Roberts’ ode to Columbus Tree:

“Once a tree in this place stood/Its branches wide, its gnarled wood,

“A friend to birds, beauty to man/For many years it graced this land.

“Through winter snow and summer shower/A sentinel to Bowman’s Tower.

“Majestically it touched the sky/Remembered now, for days gone by.

“A testament to nature’s good/For once a tree in this place stood.”

Ziggy Jr. is doing well. Hopefully, Solebury residents will enjoy her legacy when she turns 500 in 2512. I learned this week a new “oldest living tree” has been discovered in Chile. The Patagonian cypress known as “the great grandfather tree” was born 5,500 years ago. That’s when writing was invented and led to recorded history. Hello Bucks County!

Sources include “Remembering the Great Tree” published by the Solebury Historical Society in its Spring 2008 issue of Solebury Chronicles. To determine the age of your white oak, see a YouTube video on the web at https://theoaksatsacredrocks.com/oak/quick-answer-how-to-tell-how-old-my-white-oak-tree-is.html

Carl LaVO can be reached at carllavo0@gmail.com

This article originally appeared on Bucks County Courier Times: Solebury Columbus Tree lives on in white oak planted in destroyed trunk