During a Day With the Tree People, the Spirit Grows
On a tour of the spacious grounds of the Fullerton Arboretum, we stopped to gaze at a multi-trunked, 100-foot-tall tropical ohmbu tree. Scores of huge water sprouts shot straight up from its branches. Don Bauman in our group recalled some 20 years back when that tree was first hauled in for planting, small enough to be hand carried.
I spent Sunday afternoon with the tree people, soaking up the atmosphere as if I were one of them. Truth is, I know little about trees, or anything that grows in the ground.
But as Orange County blazes its way toward wall-to-wall condos, shopping centers and toll roads, it’s nice to see people like those in the Tree Society of Orange County. They struggle to make sure we keep as many of our trees as we can--and even plant a few more along the way.
Sunday’s arboretum gathering was for the Tree Society’s annual meeting. Despite getting rained out the day before, a couple dozen people showed up for the tour and meeting.
The Tree Society was created about 10 years ago after a previous tree group had quietly died out. Dorothy Callison and Steve Rose, both of Fullerton, thought it too important an issue not to try again.
“It’s easy to cut down a tree. It takes a lot longer to get one to grow back,” Rose said.
Though the group remains small in dollars, it does manage to raise enough to offer 16 small grants each year to groups that want to plant trees. The society requires that the trees be planted in public parks, that the grants go to nonprofit groups, and that most of the work be done by volunteers.
Leslie Andrew, who attended Sunday, is a good example of a grant recipient. Her Cub Scout Pack No. 26 received a grant to plant 22 trees at John Muir Fundamental Elementary School in Santa Ana. The school for years has amounted to a series of trailers but will soon get its first actual building.
“We’re planning on planting them on Arbor Day [April 24],” Andrew said. “The trees will be spread around the grounds.”
Not all news is good in the tree business, of course. I heard one report that day about a northern Orange County driving range owner who was mowing down a row of trees to put up a fence. A neighbor spotted him and placed a call to Gloria Schlaepfer. She happens to be the president of the Tree Society of Orange County, and she happens to be one of the people who had planted those very trees on an Arbor Day a few years back. The trees are on public property bordering the driving range.
Rose, who also helped plant them, has since met with the driving range owner. For now the owner has stopped chopping down the tree line.
Almost everyone in the group could tell you some great tree stories. Bea Kight-Herbst, for example, is in charge of the society’s commemorative tree program. Several times a month, she gets calls from people who want her group to plant a tree in honor of a loved one who has died, or perhaps to note an anniversary or other special occasion.
“Some like to have a ceremony for the event,” she said. “Some of them can really bring tears.”
I felt a little like the fifth-wheel on a prom date touring the arboretum grounds with people like Rose and Schlaepfer and Kight-Herbst, who are genuine experts on anything related to trees. I think I was the only one in the group who had never seen a wood duck. Everyone got excited when two landed in one of the arboretum ponds. They are magnificent birds, with bright red and green streaks on their faces and dark green head crests. Because the hole-filled trees that wood ducks like are becoming scarce, the arboretum built a wood duck box near the pond for their nesting. Don Bauman lent me his binoculars for a closer look. Like the others, I was mesmerized by the birds’ beauty.
Seems to me Orange County’s future environment might just have a fighting chance as long as we’ve got people around who can enjoy a Sunday afternoon marveling at picturesque trees and beautiful ducks.
Bird Counting: The Orange County chapter of the Audubon Society has taken up a semi-permanent residence at the Fullerton Arboretum. It’s planning a lengthy study of the birds that frequent the grounds so that bird information can be published for visitors. You can tour the arboretum seven days a week from 8 a.m. to 4:45 p.m.
Name-Drops: Here are a couple of visitors coming to Orange County you might be interested in knowing about before the tickets are gone . . .
Nobel Peace Prize winner Shimon Peres will speak on Israel’s future Feb. 22 at Temple Bat Yahm in Newport Beach at 7 p.m. Only a few tickets remain. You can buy general unreserved tickets for $18, and senior and student tickets for $12 by calling the temple at (714) 644-1999.
Peres was Israel’s prime minister from 1984 to ’86. But it was as its foreign minister in 1993 that he played an important role in peace initiatives between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization. Peres and the PLO’s Yasir Arafat shared the Nobel Peace Prize the following year.
Documentary filmmaker Eleanor Coppola will be guest lecturer this Sunday at noon at the Huntington Beach Art Center, 538 Main St., just five blocks from the city pier.
Coppola will show her latest narrated documentary titled “A Visit to China’s Miao Country.” Tickets for this fund-raiser are $35 each. You can call the Art Center at (714) 374-1650 for reservations.
Coppola won an Academy Award for her documentary “Heart of Darkness,” a behind-the-scenes look at the making of the film “Apocalypse Now,” produced and directed by her husband, Francis Ford Coppola.
Wrap-Up: If you have any interest in a commemorative tree planting ($75), you can call the Tree Society at (714) 997-5128. There’s one special tree commemoration ceremony coming up that Tree Society members are excited about. Steve Rose is retiring as treasurer of the group after 10 years. A tree will soon be planted at the arboretum and named after him.
Jerry Hicks’ column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. Readers may reach Hicks by calling the Times Orange County Edition at (714) 966-7823 or by fax to (714) 966-7711, or e-mail to jerry.hicks@latimes.com
