Capitol Hill's Very Old, Native Oak Tree

Honestly, we wouldn't know an oak tree unless it dropped an acorn with the word "oak" stamped on it on us, but this is the biggest tree we could find at the spot mentioned in The Street-Smart Naturalist, which Seattlest Dan is always going on about.

In his book, David Williams says that old Garry or Oregon white oaks are only found in three spots in Seattle that he knows of: Seward Park, Martha Washington Park, and 730 Belmont Avenue East (near the Anhalt Oak Manor).

This last is just down the Hill from where we were reading at the Victrola and so we walked down to take an in-person gander at an oak that Williams claims is "several hundred years old. It is awe inspiring, its canopy of dark green leaves towering over the nearby apartments and its 12-foot-circumference gnarled trunk splitting into numerous arms, many larger than typical street trees. No one I talked to knows why this single oak survived the logging of Capitol Hill or whether others grew nearby."

Back in 1983, writer and plant expert Arthur Lee Jacobson said a Garry oak could be found "where E Ward Street meets 26th Avenue E, very close to the Arboretum." The other one he knew of, on Harvard Avenue between Harrison and Republican Streets, was cut down in the summer of 1987. Jacobson also included a quote from architect Frederick Anhalt about the Belmont oak's age: "When I built the apartment building in 1928 the tree was about one half of the size that it is now. How old it would have been then I cannot tell you."

How much longer the Belmont Place Park oak will survive is another question: last spring, it was reported to be sick, possibly afflicted with a fungus. Sick trees really distress us for some reason. Here's hoping ole Garry pulls through.