Wes Ferguson

Forest giants weather age, development

Loblolly pine in Mount Enterprise. Photo by Les Hassell.
Loblolly pine in Mount Enterprise. Photo by Les Hassell.

Run your hand across the bark of the ancient tree. It is craggy and weathered, splotched by moss and pale green lichens.

Now look up. You’re in the presence of a giant.

Scattered throughout East Texas are a handful of trees that have escaped the logging and clearing of the past 150 years. With help from a state program that identifies and protects the biggest of the big, many of them will still be here long after their current owners are gone.

“Big trees really capture people’s imaginations,” said Pete Smith, a Texas Forest Service employee who manages the state program called Big Tree Registry.

“Especially the biggest of the big, they really dwarf us, and I think there’s some connection that people have with the biggest trees. Of course, this is Texas, so the biggest of anything is noteworthy,” Smith said. “And finding a true champion really does spark the imagination because the tree is older than us, in all likelihood, and anything that lasts longer than a human’s lifespan we memorialize in some way.”

It’s worth noting that those saplings will grow into helpful giants that suck up carbon dioxide, release the oxygen that people breathe, hold soil in place, shade homes and provide habitat for wild animals, arborists say.

Many of the trees on the Big Tree Registry come from the counties surrounding Longview. By identifying the state’s largest pines, oaks and other species, the forest service aims to protect the arboreal specimens while sparking an interest and appreciation for trees.

“My goal is to bring these trees to the public so people can ultimately see them, if not touch them,” Smith said.

Of the nearly 20 champion trees in the Longview area, the winning loblolly pine, willow oak, wax myrtle and eastern redbud are profiled below.

LOBLOLLY PINE

Scientific name: Pinus taeda
Where: Rusk County
Circumference: 165 inches
Height: 130 feet
Crown spread: 49 feet
Measured: November 2008
Nominated by: Fred Spivey

Not long ago, Texas’ biggest loblolly pine tree on record was just one of many giant pines that grew in a forest near Mount Enterprise.

“I was raised up where that tree was,” said Fred Spivey, a Mount Enterprise timber grower. “I lived maybe four miles from there. We’d go in there and squirrel hunt with a shotgun, and those trees were so tall a shotgun wouldn’t shoot a squirrel at the top. But you could shoot it with a .22.”

By the time Spivey purchased the property in 1992, the giant pine was the only big tree left standing on the property.

“The guys that owned the land before that, they cut everything,” he said. “There could have been some trees just as big, but they cut everything. That was a shame. I would have saved all the big trees, but they done that before I bought the land. Lucky they didn’t cut this one.”

Spivey also owns the state’s No. 2 giant loblolly, on a different property in Mount Enterprise. The No. 1 tree, he estimates, is between 150 and 200 years old. He keeps the area trimmed and has planted timber around it, so it’s no longer alone in a clear-cut field.

“It worried me that lightning would strike it because it was standing by itself,” he said.

WILLOW OAK

Scientific name: Quercus phellos
Where: Harrison County
Trunk circumference: 244 inches
Height: 107 feet
Crown spread: 118 feet
Measured: August 2008
Nominated by: David Simpson

Before the Civil War, a willow oak grew on a cotton plantation in Karnack, where more than 100 slaves toiled for a pioneer woman and likely divorcee named Rebecca McIntosh Hagerty.

Later, Lady Bird Johnson’s family owned the property, known as the Phoenix plantation, and the tree continued to grow.

Today, it’s the largest known willow oak in Texas, with limbs so big they could pass for trees in their own right. Owner David Simpson estimates the oak is around 200 years old.

“It’s just a mammoth tree. It covers almost two acres of ground,” said Simpson, a timber grower who purchased the property in 2002. “We all speculate that this big old tree was probably a hanging tree at one time. Its big and low-lying limbs would suit a quick rope and noose, but that’s just pure speculation.”

The Hagerty family’s remains are buried in a little cemetery near the tree, not far from a historic barn that Simpson has converted into a lodge for his family.

When a tree doctor left a rope hanging from the oak, Simpson turned it into a swing.

“My children love to swing on it,” he said. “It’s a very enjoyable tree. It provides a lot of shade and causes you to speculate about what happened in the previous 200 years.”

WAX MYRTLE (SOUTHERN BAYBERRY)

Scientific name: Morella cerifera
Where: Gregg County
Trunk circumference: 17 inches
Height: 29 feet
Crown spread: 18 feet
Measured: July 2006
Nominated by: Dencil Marsh

Dencil Marsh was exploring a forest one day when he stumbled upon an oddly shaped tree growing in a depression on 30 acres that had been set aside for the Longview Arboretum and Gardens.

It was a wax myrtle tree, and it dwarfed the others he has seen.

“It’s a shrub or bushy tree that every rancher in East Texas tries to get rid of,” said Marsh, the arboretum founder.

“It’s a nuisance to every farmer in East Texas.”

Later, Marsh showed the wax myrtle to Stephen F. Austin State University horticulturist Dave Creech, who was in town while developing a master plan for the arboretum, which is next to the Maude Cobb Convention and Activity Center.

“He said, ‘Golly, Dencil, that’s the biggest one I’ve ever seen. That might be some kind of record.’ ”

Texas Forest Service employees went out to measure it, and sure enough, it was the biggest.

“Right now we’ve got the bragging rights,” Marsh said. “Now, it’s not much of a tree, but it’s not much of a bush, either.”

EASTERN REDBUD

Scientific name: Cercis canadensis var. canadensis
Where: Upshur County
Trunk circumference: 78 inches
Height: 42 feet
Crown spread: 40 feet
Measured: April 1997
Nominated by: Marie Johnson

The state’s biggest redbud is a reminder that even champions grow old and die. State forester Ken Conaway of Gilmer checked on the redbud in Ore City a week ago and found that time has taken its toll on the tree. It is no longer the magnificent specimen it was in 1997, when Marie Johnson nominated it.

“There is another contender for the title in Smith County, and I suspect it may declared the champion soon,” Conaway said in an e-mail.

Wes Ferguson

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