COUNTYWIDE : Society Seeks Trees to Feature in Book

The Tree Society of Orange County is searching for area trees made exceptional by their history, size or beauty, with hopes of publishing a full-color, hardcover book about them, society members say.

The group is encouraging all local residents with favorite trees to contact them with nominations for the book, which project chairwoman Bea Kight-Herbst said will be a year and a half to two years in the making.

“We need massive amounts of input,” Kight-Herbst said. “We’re encouraging everyone to help out.”

The book is planned as a fund-raiser for the 350-member society and draws its inspiration from a similar project done in Los Angeles County three years ago by Don Hodel, an environmental horticultural adviser for the UC Cooperative Extension. The success of Hodel’s project convinced the society that a similar endeavor would work in Orange County, said Jack Heninger, executive director of the Tree Society.

“Orange County has a lot of exceptional trees--trees that are worth knowing about,” Heninger said. “It’s our belief and feeling that if the general public knows there are trees here worth seeing and taking note of, it will improve the understanding and cultivation of our area’s trees.”

Kight-Herbst said the planned Orange County book will differ somewhat from Hodel’s book, with larger photos, for example.

“It will be a departure from the L.A. book because Don had text underneath all the photos, while we’ll go with a full-page photo and some text over the photo, making the writing as unobtrusive as possible,” Kight-Herbst said. “We also hope to have a few maps.”

The maps will help readers find the featured trees, which will be arranged in geographic order, Kight-Herbst said.

“Basically, we want to do it in a way that you can use the book for a tour of trees, a tour that you can follow,” she said. “We thought that would be better than arranging the trees in a botanical order. So, because of that, we’re trying to limit it to trees visible to the general public because we don’t want trees out in the middle of some property that people can’t get to it.”

The society can be reached at (714) 449-7170. Send entries to Kight-Herbst at 1435 E. Walnut Ave., Orange, Calif. 92667. They should include as many of the following as possible: tree type, outstanding feature, best season, location, major cross streets, height, trunk width, canopy size, approximate age and history.