Trees as a Collector’s Item

Photo of trees by Michael Gray on pixabay.com

By Dolly Dearner

In 1936, Jesse Owens returned from the Berlin Summer Olympics with four oak trees, one for each of his gold medals in track and field. Other gold medal winners also received oak trees for their accomplishments.

Many of these oaks were eventually unaccounted for, but approximately a dozen are known to survive around the world. One of Jesse’s oaks (planted at Rhodes High School in Cleveland) is listed as a survivor but actually died recently. However, several cuttings were taken from it and grafted to produce new trees, and acorns from some of the other surviving oaks are still being planted.

This is only one of the stories in The Tree Collectors: Tales of Arboreal Obsession by Amy Stewart (Random House, 2024) profiling people who are deeply engaged in one way or another with trees.

A university art professor plants his own grafted fruit trees in public spaces as works of art. They are also resources for the community, as people are welcome to harvest the fruit. After years of work and experimentation, he eventually grafted one tree with forty different kinds of fruit.

A young Navaho woman learned from her father about early peach orchards on Navaho land that were partly destroyed and later restored. Her master’s degree adviser helped her get a grant for field work, and with help from tribal elders, she was able to locate old trees. With the seeds she collected, she started a nursery to preserve this part of her tribal heritage. 

The chapter entitled “The Unauthorized Forester” focuses on the work of Joey Santore. The resident of Oakland, CA took trees he was growing in pots and started planting them in the city’s medians.  He felt the existing trees were poorly chosen and poorly maintained, and that his own additions were better suited to the environment. More than half of the specimens he planted are thriving, and he documents some of his tree-planting activities on his Youtube channel called Crime Pays But Botany Doesn’t (very interesting and informative if you don’t mind a little cussing with your botany).

Besides the individual collectors profiled, a few small sections on themes of practical or historical interest are scattered throughout the book. These include:

  How to Move a Large Tree

  Corporate Tree Collections

  A Selected List of Surviving Olympic Oaks

  Saving Japan’s Cherry Trees

  Plant Explorers and the Trees Named for Them

The book is abundantly and beautifully illustrated by the author, with soft but vivid watercolors of individual trees, parts of trees, people, birds, landscapes, and structures – all relating in one way or another to trees.

This is a book about trees, but it’s really a book about people – what drives them, what motivates them, and what inspires them. Each collector came to the world of trees by a different path, and each has made a unique contribution to the well-being and survival of these amazing plants. The Tree Collectors is the perfect book to read during April when we celebrate Earth Day and when the neighborhood trees are producing leaves and flowers. It is available from the Metropolitan Library System in hard copy and electronic form.