By Arwyn Rice
Peninsula Daily News
PORT ANGELES — The iconic big leaf maple tree at the corner of West Eighth and South Cherry streets will be removed beginning at 7 a.m. today.
The huge, dying tree in the Bo Baggins Day Care and Preschool’s fenced play yard is about 80 feet tall and overhangs a sidewalk at one of the busier intersections in Port Angeles, said Conor Haggerty, owner of Sitkum Tree Service.
It will take about four days, and there might be some brief road closures.
A crane will be brought in Friday to help remove some of the largest branches and the misshapen, giant trunk, Haggerty said.
The tree’s typical lifespan of 300 to 500 years has been cut short due to poor tree management and downright abuse that likely began in the 1930s.
“It’s been topped, about 60 to 80 years ago,” said arborist John Longsworth, who noted that the topping was the beginning of the end for the tree.
The maple had become a Frankenstein monster, with a 10-foot diameter trunk that bulged out into a swollen, gnarled knuckle before exploding into a profusion of tentacle-like branches that filled the tree’s canopy.
Haggerty and Longsworth, of Peninsula Urban Forestry, are both International Society of Arboriculture-certified arborists hired by Bo Baggins owner Jane Childers to evaluate the tree, try to save it, and to remove it if necessary.
The tree was topped about 10 or 12 feet above the ground level, leaving only a few large branches below the cut, and vertical shoots that grew out of the stump-top grew into additional large branches that are now at least a foot in diameter.
One of those fell in November during a storm and blocked Cherry Street for several hours, Haggerty said.
City crews removed the branch while Haggerty’s tree crew cleaned up the broken branches and evaluated the tree’s condition, he said.
The arborists discovered rot and decay at many of the tree’s oddly shaped joints, and even the trunk is showing signs of rot deep inside, they said.
Pruning, cabling and other techniques won’t work, because the tree is too far gone.
Haggerty said so much has been done to the tree at various times, tree cutters expect to break chains and equipment on bits of broken fence and maybe even cement deep inside the tree’s scarred, bulging trunk.
“If this were properly taken care of a long time ago it would be a lot different,” Haggerty said.
Larger portions of the tree might be saved and evaluated to see if the wood is useful to build maple slab tables or guitar bodies, he said.
However, Haggerty and Longsworth agreed the rot is so pervasive the wood might not be usable.
The trunk’s rings might be too rotten to even learn the age of the tree.
The Bo Baggins building was built in 1919 as a Presbyterian Church on a property which had been a cemetery. The contents of the graves were moved to Oceanview Cemetery, Childers said.
Childers said she believes the tree dates back to the era when the property was part of the cemetery.
The building was later a Cavalry Baptist Church, then a fitness center and a Salvation Army Thrift Store before being purchased by Childers in 1983.
Since that time, the tree has provided shade and huge piles of giant fall leaves in the children’s play yard.
“I’m a tree hugger. I’m having a real hard time with this,” Childers said.
“It’s sad, but nothing lasts forever,” she said, looking up at the tree she knew so well.
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Reporter Arwyn Rice can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5070, or at arice@peninsuladaily
news.com.
