Charlottesville’s Tree Commission works with the Parks & Recreation Department to protect and improve the urban forest as a natural resource for our quality of life. The commission comprises 10 members plus the city’s urban forester, a planning commission representative, and one member of the Charlottesville Area Tree Stewards. Tree preservation is critical to climate sustainability, public health, and ensuring environmental justice and equity. We asked several of these tree huggers to express their deep-rooted passion by answering the question: If you were a tree, which one would you be (and why)?
Peggy Van Yahres
The white oak (Quercus alba). For one thing it’s one of the longest-lived trees. I call it the king (or, in this case, the queen) of the eastern forest. It can have a massive crown spread, like the airport oak. It harbors more insects and feeds more wildlife than any other tree in the east, and it’s just so majestic.
Vicki Metcalf
I’d be a cedar in a cedar grove. We’d make a great hidden play area for kids. I’d smell great, I’d have blueberries that smell like gin, my bark would peel wonderfully, and I’d be marvelously gnarly.
Jean Umiker-Sebeok
I’d like to be a gala apple tree growing in a communal food garden in the city. With my horizontal limbs, I’d be safe enough for kids to climb for fun or fruit but tall and wide enough to provide shade for birds and tired gardeners or picnickers.
In early spring, some would say my pink and white blossoms look like little ballerinas, a sight for winter-weary eyes.
Bees and other insects would love my nectar and, although I’m self-pollinating, they could help with that if, as I hope, people have thought to plant another gala tree nearby so that I have a friend to keep me company. I would continuously breathe out oxygen to make the city air more healthful.
Beginning in August, my fruit would ripen into lovely, golden red apples, which are sweet, crisp, and fruity. The neighborhood families who tend the garden would enjoy munching on my fruit as they take a break from their work, later gathering basketfuls and hurrying home to make apple crisp, muffins, pies, or applesauce. My apples would grace children’s lunch boxes as they return to school, and provide a bit of hilarity as kids dunk for them at Halloween parties. People would, I hope, share my fruit with the birds, mice, rabbits, squirrels, and deer that live in the neighborhood.
As temperatures drop and I prepare myself for hibernation, fallen leaves and apples on the ground would decay, supplying my roots with warmth and feeding the millions of unseen organisms in the soil that I depend on for my health.
Steve Gaines
Most any variety of tropical fig would suit me just fine (except the strangler fig, which can be wildly parasitic and usually kills its host tree). I’d be able to produce fruit year-round to nourish all kinds of wildlife. And between the monkeys, macaws, and big cats that would visit me, I’d have all kinds of interesting company and amusing stories to tell.
Mark Rylander
I would be an American elm (Ulmus americana), the classic street tree, reaching my graceful, arm-like branches across to link with my brothers and sisters, and creating a shade canopy that is like a cathedral. Some would say I am doomed since Dutch elm disease has decimated our population, but great examples live on in Court Square and along East High Street, and some new variations are making a comeback. But we can only survive like this in cities if zoning requires buildings to be set back far enough to allow us room to grow.
