Show Some Love for the Algernourne Oak this Valentine's Day Weekend

Friday, 11 February 2011 20:15 | Written by Seth Fisher

Did you know that there is a way for you to give a Valentine’s Day gift to generations to come? There is a beautiful live oak that was a mere sapling 450-500 years ago, and now it has a chance to be designated as a 'Remarkable Tree of Virginia;' but it needs your vote. Enter the Algernourne Oak at Fort Monroe...

“Why all this fuss about a tree?” asks Debbie Blanton from the Hampton Clean City Commission, “In this case, we're standing up to be counted, because this particular tree is a link to our distant past and, hopefully, to our distant future.”

“But trees in general deserve a fuss to be made over them because they give us so much and ask so little. They give us a variety of environmental quality gifts, like clean water, clean air, erosion prevention, and temperature modification, habitat for wildlife, noise absorption, and food.

They give us beauty that can’t be provided in any other way, with their pleasing shapes, beautiful colors, and background to our everyday lives. They also connect us to the past in a way that almost nothing else does, except perhaps old houses or archaeological finds. The best part is that they are still living and breathing, while old houses and artifacts are not.”

“The huge trees we admire today didn’t jump into the ground yesterday. They’ve grown over decades and centuries to remind us of what once was.”

“For example, we can’t look at the Emancipation Oak http://tinyurl.com/4ub57bk without thinking about the Civil War, the Emancipation Proclamation, the founding of Hampton University, and the educator Mary Peake.

We can’t visit the Moon Tree http://tinyurl.com/4okyofx at Booker Elementary School without being reminded of the young space program and the hopes of a Bicentennial nation and the young girl Marjorie White, who wrote a poem that won for the school the sycamore tree grown from seeds that traveled in space.”

“Virginia Tech’s R. J. Stipes, professor of plant pathology and physiology, has estimated that the Algernourne Oak may have germinated in 1540. The date is just an estimate, but it is based on real evidence. In 1997, Stipes and colleagues conducted a study at Fort Monroe during which several live oaks were cored to determine their ages. The Algernourne Oak was not cored, but based on data from nearby trees; the researchers came up with an average number of tree rings per inch of trunk diameter. By their estimates, the Algernourne Oak was 437 years old in 1977.”

According to ‘Virginia Remarkable Trees’ author, Nancy Ross Hugo:

“The Agernourne Oak can vie with any in Virginia for ’most history witnessed’ because of its strategic significance at the entrance to the James River, the site near which it grows has been home to forts since 1609, when Ft. Algernourne (named for an English lord) was built. That wooden stockade, destroyed by fire, was followed by a series of other fortifications, including two destroyed by hurricanes, that were designed to protect the area first from the Spanish, then the British, then Confederates (the Union held the fort during the Civil War).

Luminaries who may have passed the tree include Edgar Allen Poe, who served as a soldier there; Chief Black Hawk and his warriors, who were “detained” there; President Lincoln, who attended a peace conference there; Robert E. Lee, who served there prior to the Civil War; and Jefferson Davis, who was a prisoner there. And that doesn’t include the long, unrecorded American Indian history on the site or the non-human connections to this tree.

Today, the tree grows comfortably along the well-manicured parade ground at Ft. Monroe, where military employees and civilians still stroll past it, but it is also home to a colony of yellow-crowned night herons that nest and roost in the tree. To them the tree is more than an historical or ornamental curiosity; it’s a part of the living landscape.”

To show your love and appreciation for this grand old tree of Hampton, go to: http://tinyurl.com/6xfdndz and give it five stars.

Special thanks to:

Debbie Blanton from the Hampton Clean City Commission; and Bill Armbruster, Executive Director Fort Monroe Authority for the information on this remarkable tree.