Chronicling a Tree: Thoreau's Concord Elm

10/14/22 • 59 min

Concord, Massachusetts, 1856. Four men cut down a huge, seemingly healthy American elm tree using block and tackle, and ropes drawn by a horse. The graceful tree towered above a house whose owners heard creaking during a storm - they felt unsafe and had it removed. The event would have been long forgotten, except one of America’s greatest writers and earliest environmentalists also lived in Concord - Henry David Thoreau.

Supremely ticked-off, the removal of the stately elm inspired a flurry of journal writing by Thoreau that defined elms as symbols of virtue that looked to Concord’s past and the country’s future. Guest Thomas Campanella, Professor at Cornell University and author of Republic of Shade: New England and the American Elm, shares his work. It turns out, elm trees helped define our young nation’s sense of itself.

Guest
Thomas J. Campanella
Professor of City and Regional Planning
Cornell University
Republic of Shade: New England and the American Elm, Yale University Press, 2003.
Henry David Thoreau and the Yankee Elm, Arnoldia, 2001.
Other Sources:
Thoreau and the Language of Trees, Richard Higgins, Univ of California Press, 2017.
Podcast Consultant
Martha Douglas-Osmundson
Music
"Nothing Like the Summer," Brightarm Orchestra

Theme Music
Diccon Lee, www.deeleetree.com
Artwork
Dahn Hiuni, www.dahnhiuni.com/home
Website
thisoldtree.show
Transcripts available.
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Previous Episode

The Edison Banyan

Why did Thomas Edison plant a banyan tree sapling at his winter residence in 1926? You guessed it, there was an experiment involved. Native to India, it is now a massive, beloved tree at the Edison & Ford Winter Estates in Fort Myers, Florida. While this isn’t an “escape from the lab” story, it is sort of a “took over the lab” story! Debbie Hughes, the Horticultural Director, explains what happened. Also, we dig into the mythology of fig trees - specifically “strangler” figs - and their critical ecological and cultural importance with rainforest ecologist and author Mike Shanahan.
Guests
Debbie Hughes
Horticultural Director, Edison & Ford Winter Estates
https://www.edisonfordwinterestates.org/
Mike Shanahan
Author, Gods, Wasps, and Stranglers: The Secret History and Redemptive Future of Fig Trees
https://underthebanyan.blog/about/
Tree Story Short
Sashil Sachdeva
Vadodara, India
Podcast Consultant
Martha Douglas-Osmundson
Music
"Sleepy Head," Alchemorph

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The First 9/11 Survivor Trees

The Survivor Tree is a well known tree planted at the 9/11 Memorial and Museum in New York City that was rescued from the rubble at the World Trade Center site after the terrorist attacks. It has become a stirring symbol of resilience and survival visited by millions of people.
But few people remember there were six other trees rescued from the site and transplanted in early October of 2001. Host Doug Still was part of the City Parks Department team that found them along with his former boss Bram Gunther. Doug and Bram recount the day they visited Ground Zero, describe how these remarkable trees were saved, and discover what's become of them.

Guest
Bram Gunther
Native New Yorker; former Chief of Forestry, Horticulture, and Natural Resources for New York City Parks; co-founding partner of Dirt Collective, a start-up focused on re-wilding.
linkedin.com/in/bram-gunther-b8346522b
Podcast Consultant
Martha Douglas-Osmundson
Music
"Running Circles (Instrumental)," Cody Francis

This Old Tree - Chronicling a Tree: Thoreau's Concord Elm

Transcript

Doug Still00:00:00.359

The place is Concord Massachusetts, the year 1856. At 10am on a January day, four men began removing a huge American elm tree trunk using block and tackle, and ropes drawn by a horse. The upper branches had been removed a few days before. Prior to this, the tree along the main road was seemingly healthy, and was a village marker seen by everyone passing through the old colonial town. The tree towered above a house owned by Mr. And Mrs. Charles B