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ince 1929, the willow oak cast an ever-widening shadow. With limbs stretched out over Lou Mac Park and South Avenue, it revealed a lacy pattern in winter and a more solid silhouette, a refuge from the heat, in summer.

Those shadows, 80+ years in the making, became much, much smaller Wednesday morning, and just before noon, they disappeared altogether.

A tree crew hired by the Town had sawed off half of the willow oak’s limbs by mid-morning. Oriental’s Tree Board had recommended its removal because of decay on one side of the trunk that had diminished the tree’s strength and so it posed a potential hazard to parkgoers. The entire tree was down before noon.

In fewer than 4 hours Wednesday morning, a tree crew hired by the Town cut down the willow oak. There is little to cast a shadow with now.

The tree in late January. After monitoring the tree over the past decade, Oriental’s Tree Board recently determined that the tree had lost 43% of its strength and should come down.

The tree had long revealed a 10-foot long gash on the South Avenue side. Interior rot was in plain view. That’s why, for a decade, the Oriental Tree Board had been monitoring the health of the willow oak. In recent months, the Tree Board determined that the big oak had lost 43% of its strength. The Town Board agreed that it posed a potential hazard to those under it if a weakened limb fell.

The 90 year old willow oak had spread across both Lou Mac Park and South Avenue On Wednesday morning, the street was a staging area for taking the tree down.

The willow oak was one of 9 trees planted in 1929 at the new Lou Mac Park to get more people to use it: in its early days, the park had no shade, which meant that in hot weather, it saw little use. $27 was raised to beautify the plot, and plant 6 oaks and 3 other trees.
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The end of an old friend…Just a few hours into the job Wednesday morning, the trunk was toppled . (Click on image to start short movie which rolls like film shot in the same era in which the tree was planted.) (photos by Johnny Reiswig /movie by TownDock.net)

Wednesday’s removal of the tree leave a shadeless gap in Lou Mac’s landscape, but it is one the Tree Board hopes to fill soon. The Tree Board will not put another willow oak in its place – of the oaks native to this area, says the Tree Board Chair Bob Miller, a retired professor of urban forestry, the willow oak is most susceptible to decay.

Something to remember the tree by.

Some of the tree became firewood.

The Tree Board is opting instead to transplant a Live Oak from the Recreation Field at Straight Road. It’s about 20 feet tall and has a trunk 8-inches in diameter, but its transplant will not happen right away. It’s currently at the far, centerfield end of baseball field; the now-soggy ground will have to dry out before the truck with digging equipment ventures in.

Tree Board volunteer Ken King provides scale for the Live Oak destined for Lou Mac to replace the willow oak cut down Wednesday.

Posted Wednesday February 10, 2016 by Melinda Penkava