Posted on 04/13/2005 6:03:40 PM PDT by SwinneySwitch
It wasn't just any oak tree that politicians gathered to shovel dirt at on the Bexar County Courthouse's south lawn. It was grown from an acorn off the Treaty Oak.
Austin's Treaty Oak is about 500 years old and was supposedly the site where Stephen F. Austin signed a treaty with Native Americans.
But it was what many considered its attempted murder by Paul Stedman Cullen in 1989 that made the tree famous to most moderns.
Cullen, who had a criminal history, drug problems and an interest in the occult, poured a powerful herbicide around the stately tree's base in an attempt to break a spell of apparently unrequited love.
News reports drew international attention to the tree as it struggled against the poison, while experts tried to save it and authorities hunted down Cullen. Eventually, Cullen served three years in prison, and about two-thirds of the tree died.
Now 100 of its saplings, grown from acorns the surviving remnant produced in 1997, are being planted across Texas, as a part of H.E. Butt Grocery Co.'s “Trees for Texas” program. H-E-B is working with American Forests to draw attention to its 100th anniversary.
The courthouse tree, which county workers had planted the day before, was the last in the series.
Despite the fact that it was grown from an acorn of the mighty oak, Bexar County's Treaty Oak II won't be the same.
The tree's seedlings will be genetically different from the original, said L.J. Grauke, a horticulturist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
“If someone wanted to reproduce the Treaty Oak, what they would do is take a cutting and root that cutting,” Grauke said.
He said that the poisoning probably did not damage the tree's genetic structure.
“The value of the Treaty Oak was its history, and that can't be replaced. It sounds like people are working to make it last at some level, anyway.”
The Texas Forest Service and Keep San Antonio Beautiful also participated in the program.
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eallen@express-news.net
Can you even root an oak cutting?
Texas Treaty Oak Ping!
Please let me know if you want on or off this South Texas/Mexico ping list.
Okay, how in the heck did this post get a pulled post?
Cool story. I remember the tree-murder attempt; we lived in S.A. at the time.
It's Bush's fault...
This was a magnificant oak that covered about 3/4 of an acre before that deranged individual poured the herbicide Velpar on it.
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Treaty Oak in May 1989. In 1927 this beautiful tree was included in the Hall of Fame for Trees and was called the most perfect specimen of a North American tree. |
Texas would have been better off if Cullen had followed the rules of unrequited love by cutting off his ear.
I don't think you can. However, you can GRAFT a piece from the original tree to one of the seedlings and reproduce it that way.
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