Three years ago when Pat Weptler bought 719 Havelock in Lucknow, it wasn’t for the leafy tree that towered over her new home.
She appreciated it, she said, as it’s a nice tall shade tree, but she thought it was nothing more than a deformed maple as it produces leaves with fewer lobes (the individual points of a leaf) than a leaf of a regular maple, and the lobes its leaves do have appear fused together.
“That’s what the leaf looks like, like a deformed maple,” she said.
However, at that time, she didn’t know that high up in its canopy large yellow blossoms that cup around tens of sinewy filaments at its centre bloom every spring.
“I was shocked,” she said. “I had never seen one of them before.”
After doing some research online she learned that what was growing in her front lawn was not a malformed maple but a liriodendron tulipifera, better known as a tulip tree.
She also learned that it’s growing just outside its native habitat of the Carolinian forest zone that covers much of the eastern United States and southern Ontario. However, the zone ends near London.
Since she discovered the identity of her 100-year-old tree, she has been its most ardent supporter, even going so far as championing it for Ontario Heritage Tree status. She has also placed large name signs at its trunk’s base to tell passersby what they are looking at.
While It does not meet the criteria to be a Heritage Tree, of which there are only about 30 in the province, it is being examined by Forest Ontario as a potential seed tree.
“It is a very important tree to us,” said Kerry McLaven, the forest program manager at Forest Ontario. “It’s very good for the tree planting work that we do across the province, so this is a really unique species for us.”
The tree, she said, will be monitored for crop production of seed cones, which may be harvested in the fall to be later used to populate the tree in the area.
While much attention is paid to the environmental significance of trees, less is given to the social role they play, she said.
“It’s really important to identify the fact that it is socially significant,” she said. “[Weptler’s tree is] going to be a landmark in that area as long as it stays healthy and nobody is cutting it, and that is significant to have in a community.”
Toni Ellis, co-ordinator with Heritage Tree Ontario, said it is “wonderful” to see a member of the community working so hard to raise awareness about her tree and hopes others in the community will take a similar interest in what’s growing in their yards.
“In this day and age we need our trees like never before,” she said. “We understand now how much value they bring to a community. It’s wonderful to see somebody who is so keen to protect her tree and celebrate it.”
Trees add value, Ellis elaborated, both monetarily and socially.
For one, they offer shade, which Ellis said is becoming increasingly important due to the rise in skin cancer, cool the environment, convert carbon dioxide to oxygen and slow rainfall.
“So when you have street trees when the rain hits the canopy of the tree it slows how quickly it hits the pavement, so it extends the life of the pavement, and it reduces how much water actually goes into the storm drain,” she said.
When it comes to aesthetics, she said, there isn’t a single person who claims that a street with no trees is more attractive than a street covered with them.
“They’re really seen as bringing a great deal of beauty to landscape,” she said.
Recent studies, she said, show that a single good-sized tree can increase the value of a property by 10 per cent.
Weptler’s attitude towards her tree is part of a larger trend towards a new movement called green infrastructure, which aims to solve climate change through incorporating and embracing trees, bush and the like in urban settings.
Green infrastructure is the opposite of what is called grey infrastructure, which includes buildings, streets and industrial areas.
However, Ellis says municipalities are moving away from grey infrastructure with several in Ontario having adopted green infrastructure initiatives.
“The days of cavalierly chopping down a tree just because you don’t think it has value, for me anyway, are over. We need to recognize that the trees we have took a long time to get there,” she said.
Which is a good thing, she said, as it’s getting harder and harder for new trees to take root and grow due to a lack of water which has caused the recent ban on open fires in both Kincardine and Huron-Kinloss municipalities.
Her organization should be planting, she said, but they aren’t because it’s too dry out.
“It’s really important that we save the trees we got,” she said, making necessary people like Weptler who have this enthusiasm for urban greenery.
“She’s helping to raise the profile of the urban forest in Lucknow, and if she influences a few people to say, ‘wow, we never really thought about this before,’ this is great. So I say, good for her,” she said.
McLaven, from Forest Ontario, said it’s people such as Weptler who encourage municipalities to make the change from grey to green infrastructure.
“It is very important to have people who are passionate about trees because it tends to drive the emotions among other people,” she said. “We have places all over the province that have no tree cutting bylaws that will help to protect some of these significant trees.”
It is their passion for trees that get the ball rolling on making tangible change in our communities, she said.
“From somebody who's trying to build community awareness about the value of trees, that’s pretty impressive,” she said.