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South Avenue Oak Comes Down
Pieces of the Oak & A Live Cedar Saved
November 12, 2010

S
outh Avenue is not shaded by the Artesian willow oak anymore. On Monday and Tuesday of this week, its limbs and then most of the trunk were cut off, leaving a 12 foot high stump at the site.

At right, the trunk/stump left standing as two sections of the tree — on the trailer — go on their way to Oriental’s History Museum.

Other remnants of the tree will remain in town. Two sizeable portions of the trunk were taken to the Oriental History Museum. Many pieces of the tree were also taken by residents who wanted a memento.

The chipper devoured part of the tree, but many pieces were taken home by area residents. This photo from Monday morning shows the tree with many of its limbs still attached.
A Landmark

The willow oak has been a landmark. The tree’s exact age has not yet been determined, but it is thought to be at least 100 years old. It grew next to what had been an artesian well. In the 1920’s, concrete benches were built around the well and since then, the tree’s roots grew around the benches.

By mid-day Monday, much of the tree had been limbed and those pieces lay on South Avenue. The tree service let the public take those pieces they wanted — for woodworking or firewood.

This summer, two limbs from the tree fell — on separate occasions — during what the Oriental Tree Board says were light to moderate winds. Concern about other falling limbs and some evidence of decay in those limbs led the Tree Board to decide to have the tree removed.

Bring your own shadow catcher. The sawdust provides the backdrop for Jonathon Mitchell’s silhouette .

There has been some dissent over the tree cutting, and many who came by murmured that they were sad to see the tree go, but there was no organized opposition. On Monday morning, Pamlico Tree Care’s Jonathan Mitchell and his crew began the work.

On the sidewalk where the tree’s root requires high stepping, sawdust blanketed the ground Tuesday.
Saving Pieces Of The Tree

A crane was in place to lower the cut limbs to the ground. Mitchell said he did that because there had been a lot of requests for the wood and the gentler landing made for less marring of the pieces.

A limb aloft. Once on the ground many limbs were cut in to two- and three-inch-wide sections as souvenirs.

There were a lot of takers. While Mitchell worked from a cherry picker bucket up in the upper reaches — and then lower reaches — of the tree, the grounds crew cut disk shaped cross sections and laid them at curbside for people to take as mementos. Many did.

Cross-sections of the oak were given away to anyone who wanted them. There were many takers, and the tree crew custom-cut some of the larger 2-foot wide slices for residents as well.

By Monday night the tree was reduced to its trunk and on Tuesday, that trunk was cut in sections. Two of those sections, the last to be cut, were brought to Oriental’s History Museum. They are at least three feet across.

Cheryl Crowley rolled away a piece of the tree Tuesday morning.

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An Old Tree, But How Old?

While a plaque on the tree marking the site of the now-dry artesian well says that the willow oak is 200 years old, there is some skepticism about that.

John Bond counts the rings. They were farther apart at the center of the tree and tightly packed a few inches from the bark, indicating little growth in the past few decades.

Bob Miller, head of the Tree Board, and a retired professor of urban forestry, notes that a 100 year old tree could reach the size this one did, if it had been free-standing and not competing with other trees in a forest setting. Oriental’s history points to that, as the town was founded in the late 19th century. The tree may have been planted when the streets were laid out. (And as one resident noted, if it had been a forest tree, it would have been cut down since Oriental was a lumber town.)

Jonathon Mitchell and the crew from Pamlico Tree Care — The ground crew: Tony Keys, Austin Capara, Greg Respers, Matthew Rouse — pose with the sections of the oak that they would take to Oriental’s History Museum. A cedar tree can be seen growing from the trunk piece at right.

A cursory count of the rings on the last piece taken from the tree – now at the Oriental History Museum — finds that the rings in the middle are wide apart. Chairmaker and wood artisan Michael Brown says that suggests there was lots of water for the tree in its early years. The rings get much tighter together in the outer few inches of the tree, which was about 30-40 years ago, Brown guesses.

Signage as understatement. At right is what remained of the oak tree on Monday night. After the work was finished Tuesday, the trunk was reduced to 12 feet.

That would be about the time when the artesian well next to the tree went dry in the 1960’s. The asphalt on South Avenue and other impervious surfaces may also have kept the water from its roots, and so, made for less growth. This may explain why older residents of town remember the tree as being already very large when they were young.

The tree crew cut slabs or cross-sections of the tree for residents to take away as mementos.
Jonathan Mitchell deployed a rake. Not for leaves, but to pull out debris from a hole on the side of the trunk. At one point, this meant taking an unconventional approach.

Once they were lowered to the ground, some decay could be seen in the internal parts of limbs., and at the parts of the trunk where water could collect. Rot was not apparent in the wood of the main trunk. At the top of the remaining trunk, however, Jonathan Mitchell says there was about a foot long “weather crack” that was almost as deep.


Jonathon Mitchell took this photo of the top of the remaining trunk. The tape measure checks in at 38 inches across. That weather crack in the center, Mitchell said, goes down almost a foot.

The 12-foot stump. Also still in place, the shin-high root across the sidewalk, which requires, as Per Erichsen does here, a big step up and over.

One local artist, Gil Fontes, has offered to carve that stump.
Meanwhile, other pieces of the tree have been distributed around town, as residents stopped by to take home a piece of Oriental’s history. Some wanted the wood for their own carving or woodwork, others stocked up on firewood. Many asked for and received cross section slices of the tree, lining up as one would at a deli, asking for particular cuts.

Piece of the tree with a tree in it. A cedar has been growing in a crook of the tree. This piece, the bottom-most cut off of the trunk, was lowered to the ground, on to a trailer and has been placed in front of the Oriental History Museum. The cedar will live on there. (Perhaps as a bonsai?)

The tree crew also delivered two of the lower-most pieces of the Artesian Oak’s trunk to the Oriental History Museum. The piece closest to the Museum’s front door has a two-foot tall red cedar tree growing from a crook in the side of the trunk. Efforts to pull the cedar from the oak were unsuccessful, and for now, it will be the tree that — bonsai or free form — lives on in the Oriental landmark.

Tom Smith says he grew up across the street from the South Avenue oak and remembers it as being a pretty big tree when he was a boy. A volunteer at Oriental’s History Museum he stepped outside Friday to inspect one of the two tree trunks that have been brought to the museum. (A coating of sealant had just been painted on. It will dry to clear.)

Ahead, some words of advice about preserving those bits of oak.

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Nol and Carolyn Engel with some of the cross sections they saved from the chipper. Whether used as masks or other purpose, the wood may require treatment, sooner rather than later.

Many people took away disks of wood from the Artesian oak. Some spoke about making carvings, others stools, or small tables. One man took a 5-foot limb and made a rough-hewn chair right on the spot.

A cross made by Stan Brown former minister at Oriental’s United Methodist Church. A few hours earlier on Monday morning, right on the spot on South Water Street, he fashioned a chair with a few swipes of the chain saw.
Diane Sanwick said that in the early 1960’s she played in a tree house about 15 feet up in the oak tree. Though smiling here, she was saddened about the tree coming down and drove from her home in New Bern to Oriental Monday afternoon to pay respects. She left with some remnants of the tree which she said she would make in to stools.

Whether you do something with it right away or in a year, the trick is to get that wood sealed now, says Michael Brown.

The Arapahoe-based chairmaker says that the willow oak has a high water content — 80% — which evaporates when it’s cut. All that water loss, says Brown, means the “wood fibers split under the duress” which leads to a pattern called ‘checking’.

That is why, Brown says, that in the lumber industry “logs are sawn soon after cutting. The sawmills often keep the logs sprinkled with water the whole time they are stored to reduce moisture loss.”

In front of the Oriental History Museum on Friday, chairmaker Michael Brown applied Anchorseal to the trunk, working around the cedar tree that grows from a nook on the side of the trunk. The sealant, he says, will keep the wood from drying out, and the sooner it is applied, the better. As for the cedar, it may have a bonsai life ahead of it.

For those Oriental area residents who have pieces of the Artisian Oak, and want to slow down that drying process, Brown advises that “the end grain of the wood should be sealed as soon as possible. This sealing may be accomplished using any paint or varnish.”

Michael Brown pauses in the sealant application to point out how the rings farther out in the tree are much closer together than those at its center. Closer rings mean the tree wasn’t growing much, due to a lack of water. Counting back from the bark that slow growth period appears to have been about 35-40 years ago. That would coincide with the time in the 1960’s when the artesian well next to the tree ran dry.

Brown stopped by the Oriental History Museum on Friday and applied a coat of a sealant — a wax latex emulsion called ANCHORSEAL — on both of the trunk sections.

John Bond and neighbor Maggie Monk head toward their homes with two large cross-sections. As wood craftsman Michael Brown recommends, a oak needs a sealant to prevent drastic moisture loss and “checking”.

Posted Friday November 12, 2010 by Melinda Penkava


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