A tulip poplar fell in a wind storm Wednesday, April 27 on MTSU’s campus. The toppled tree was likely more than 70 years old. (Photo submitted.)
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If a tree falls in the forest, will anyone tweet about it?
Yes indeed. In fact, one old tulip poplar was treated as the MTSU equivalent of a regal sequoia, and with good reason.
It’s seen nearly as much university history as the columns of Kirksey Old Main, shading thousands of students as they studied or snacked or simply sat down beneath it to ponder when they’d finally graduate.
When that 40-foot tulip poplar fell on April 27, toppled in the predawn hours by fingers of the fierce winds from one of the most destructive tornado days in U.S. history, it split a neighboring ash tree and pulled up a quarter of the adjoining sidewalk outside the Cope Administration Building.
A massive oak a couple of hundred yards north fell in the windstorm, too, barely missing part of Peck Hall.
Grounds Services crews were en route as the sun rose, pulling on work gloves, cordoning off the area and adding the cleanup to their post-storm task lists.
Campus conversation moved fast as students and staff spied the damage on their way around campus.
Technology moved even faster: NewsChannel5 had a photo of the downed tulip poplar on its website by 7:06 a.m., courtesy of an anonymous sender, and an early-morning tweet from @MTSUNews included a link to a similar photo.
Then, of course, the questions started.
The MTSU tweet said the tree was 100 years old.
A student told passers-by that the tree was 300 years old.
We in News and Media Relations thought the tulip poplar might have been one of the original plantings alongside what would become Walnut Grove, created in September 1930 when custodian J.H. Bayer planted walnuts from Mount Vernon along a path south of what was then the college’s library.
But since we expected questions, we called the Albert Gore Research Center, who told us that Grounds Supervisor Larry Sizemore was the man to ask.
The subject of a short feature in the new MTSU Magazine (mtsu.edu/MTSUMagazine), Sizemore has been updating a campus tree inventory.
He’d already been poring over historic campus photos for the earliest proof of the tree’s presence.
His answer?
“I think we should just say ‘more than 70 years old,’ because until I can’t find any evidence of that tree being there before Walnut Grove,” Sizemore said. “I’ve tried to count the rings, and it’s just about impossible to get an accurate count so far.”
A local tree-surgery crew handled the tulip-poplar cleanup while MTSU crews took care of the rest of the damage around campus.
A stump is all that remains now of the tulip poplar, the Tennessee state tree, that stood above decades of activity at what would become Middle Tennessee State University.
One observer remarked, as the cleanup neared its end, on the fascinating changes the old tree had seen.
“For example,” he said, “while I was by here the other morning, two girls came by with service dogs. The dogs walked up, saw the tape, sniffed and then guided the girls around the whole area, so they wouldn’t get hurt. They went right on by, holding their coffee cups, on to the library or wherever they were going. Those students go here now and do everything anyone else does, because of their guide dogs and the technology. Who’d have thought that when that old tree was planted?”
Indeed. Who would have thought?
Gina E. Fann, an MTSU alumna, is editor of The Record, the university’s official publication, and handles content for the university’s news site, MTSUnews.com. She also has a dinner-plate-sized piece of that old tulip poplar in her office in the Tom Jackson Building, the original Normal School’s dining hall, which will be 100 years old in September. To see photos of MTSU’s history, visit the James E. Walker Library’s “MTSU Memory Collection” online at bit.ly/MTSUMemories. |
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