Tag: trees
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A recent story in the New York Times lamented irreparable damage to the ‘Witness’ Tree outside of Abraham Lincoln’s former home, part of the Lincoln Home National Historic Site in Springfield, Illinois. What is a Witness Tree? They are trees that were present during a grand historical or cultural event in America. The trees got…
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Tree Canopy US is a canopy data project of the Arbor Day Foundation (founders of TreeCity® designations), the US Forest Service, and PlantITGeo. It states its goals as helping communities understand their tree canopy data and “understand how well plans and projects are working.” It only measures trees over 10-15 feet high, or otherwise relatively…
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From our heartwood to yours, thank you to everyone who has written, called, posted, and spoken this year in support of saving this special old tree, its friends, wildlife that depend on it, wetlands, and all the surrounding habitat in Sterling Heights, Michigan. These natural features belong to all of us, support all of us.…
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When this site started, the simple premise was to provide additional information for context and understanding beyond what the initial reporting on the threat to this old tree could offer. People wanted more information, and for many, seeing it in a local paper was the first time they learned the City had a tree older…
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The US is fortunate to have a group of ten federal agencies, called Multi-Resolution Land Characteristics (MRLC) Consortium, that coordinate land cover information and imagery provided by the Landsat 5 and Landsat 7 satellites. They collaborate to create the National Land Cover Database (NLCD), where the primary objective is stated as: The primary objective of…
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This is the final post of our three-part series exploring other Chinkapin Oaks around Michigan. As you’ve seen, the Sterling Heights Chinkapin Oak (Quercus muehlenbergii) on Van Dyke has massive relatives and has earned its place in this family over centuries. It’s important because it requires a shift in our thinking, valuations, and decision-making regarding…
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The large Chinkapin Oak (Quercus muehlenbergii) in Sterling Heights on Van Dyke has some giant cousins in Southern Michigan – all here long before the cities, development projects, and coming and going of government officials and numerous administrations. All in all, they have endured despite the continued threats against them because somebody, somewhere, prioritized their…
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In an earlier post, we shared James Vukelich’s lessons from the Ojibwe people and their language on how to speak about trees, learning the Ojibwe word ‘Mitig.‘ He discussed how the word is an animate noun used in a context similar to referring to a relative. This grammatical pattern is central to the workings of…
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On February 14, 2025, journalist Andy Kozlowski of C&G Newspapers published a follow-up story to his original one in January about the centuries-old Chinquapin oak tree in Sterling Heights, Michigan. It began to hit resident’s mailboxes on February 20, 2025, in the print edition. After being contacted by many residents, Kozlowski made their voices known…
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Wisdom from the Anishinaabe / Ojibwe people and language. You wonder how our world, attitudes, and this elder tree’s fate would change if we shifted our references and relationships. View this post on Instagram A post shared by James Vukelich (@jamesvukelich) Featured Image: Yggdrasil World Tree – From Northern Antiquities, an English translation of the Prose Edda from…
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When people witness vast amounts of clear-cutting of trees, it is a common question to ask “How can this be a ‘Tree City?’“ Why this matters: To understand the range of claims from a city being “a fraud” to the other extreme of using it as marketing on environmental commitments. “Tree City” qualification requirements are…
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How did this centuries-old tree come under threat after enduring so much, for so long? Aside from the turnover of land when Native American tribes owned the land now called Michigan, the recent history begins 20+ years ago, when this Chinquapin Oak stood in an amusement park (Riverland Amusement Park) that has existed under various…