Cultivating the next 'Old Willow'

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Employees at Penn State’s Office of the Physical Plant are preparing to install an Old Willow sapling this week, continuing a tradition that spans the University’s history.

The replanting is the culmination of years of work from numerous employees, including those who have monitored previous trees and prepared the site. Tom Flynn, manager of grounds services, spoke with Penn State News about his team’s work to monitor and prepare the new willow sapling ahead of its planting at University Park and, for the first time, distribution of saplings to 18 other Penn State campuses and locations across the commonwealth.

Q: What brought you to working on the Old Willow replanting? How did you get involved, and why?

Flynn: I was a landscape architect with Physical Plant for the past 20 years before I took this position four months ago. So I have a long history with Penn State, and I am a bit of a history nerd, so I geek out on all things related to the history of the campus grounds and campus development, including architecture, landscape architecture, things like that.

Old Willow has a lot to do with our history. Penn State's land-grant mission was very integral to our founding. There was obviously a great emphasis on agriculture, rural practices, and then eventually the sciences and engineering. Legend has it that Evan Pugh, Penn State’s first president, got the first Old Willow from Alexander Pope's garden, and as it came from a poet, it gave a nod to more of the liberal arts.

Q: How long has the tree been a part of campus?

Flynn: The first Old Willow was originally planted in 1859 along the main driveway onto the campus at what’s now the Allen Street Mall. It used to be the driveway onto campus at one time, up until around the 1920s, before it became the pedestrian mall that it is today.

The original Old Willow tree lasted until 1923, when it came down in a windstorm. Cuttings were taken from that original tree, and they were planted nearby, near the original location, but not in the exact same spot. That second-generation tree ended up growing in that location until the 1970s, when it came down. The third-generation tree was planted using cuttings from that second-generation tree, and that's the one that existed up until just a few years ago.

Realistically willows are relatively short-lived trees. We have oaks on campus that predate the University; they're very long-lived trees. They're around for hundreds of years. But with a willow, we're going to be lucky if we get 50 years out of a tree. The historical and cultural tradition that goes along with the Old Willow makes it worthwhile for us to go ahead and plant that, even though we know that it might not be the longest-lived tree in the world.

Q: How are the cuttings taken, and how do you care for them?

Flynn: With each Old Willow, we take a segment of a branch and cut it. Of course, it gets a little bit more detailed than this, but those cuttings are then potted and allowed to root. We took about 50 cuttings when the third generation of Old Willow came down a few years ago.

Those went to our greenhouses, they were rooted out, and then they were eventually moved to a tree nursery that we have off campus to allow them to gain some size. They're relatively low maintenance. Some would say they're like a weed because they grow so robustly. Once they are out in the nursery, there's really not a whole lot that has to happen with the tree.

Then, for the past couple of years, we've been able to turn our backs on them and just let them do their thing and grow up. Some have died, but the vast majority of them are doing really well. They look great.

Q: What happens to the saplings not planted at University Park?

Flynn: We have way more Old Willows growing than we really need on this campus, but that was done on purpose. We're making them available to the Commonwealth Campuses and other Penn State locations around the state, such as research centers.

Derek Kalp, who's a landscape architect in the Office of the Physical Plant, has been working closely with our Commonwealth Campuses and other locations across the state to ensure they receive their own Old Willow. Lion Surplus has offered to assist with the transportation logistics for the trees across the state. We currently have 18 additional sites where Old Willow will be planted.

We’re trying to disperse this Penn State tradition and get it to quite literally grow outside the confines of the University Park campus.

Q: How do you pick the sapling to plant? Are some better than others?

Flynn: There’s a tradition in nurseries where you go out and you grade the trees based on their quality. For instance, some of the trees in the nursery have survived, but they’ve been wounded by rot and damaged by groundhogs. Out of the 50 or so growing at the nursery, I would say a full two thirds of those are of an “A” quality, to kind of put it in academic grading terms. With wounded trees, we're not even going to bother putting the labor and digging those and getting them ready for transplant because the quality is low enough that I wouldn't want anybody to take those.

All the trees that we're planting this year are going to be quality trees. All the “A” and “A plus” trees, those are the ones that we're going to dig up and we're going to make available, whether it's University Park or any of the other campuses. And we are going to keep some at least for another year in the nursery just in case we need replacements for any of these ones that we're sending out.

Q: What’s the process for replanting the tree?

Flynn: The planting process is actually pretty simple. You dig a hole, which has to be a certain depth based on the root ball of the tree, so an experienced installer will know what depth to actually plant that tree. There's a metal cage around the root ball holding everything together. You remove that metal cage and then you backfill the hole, and that is pretty much it. That's the planting process.

We will take the extra step of putting in some wooden stakes to support the tree. There will be at least two stakes on either side of the tree with a nylon strap around the trunk of the tree to keep it as straight as we possibly can keep it, and we will put a water bag on it. The water bag provides a constant supply of supplemental water for the tree. That's pretty much the process for any tree on campus, not just Old Willow.

We typically expect around here that the first season or two, we have to provide the tree some supplemental water via the bag because there is some root loss when you're transplanting a tree. To give it a chance to recover from that root loss, you have to give it some supplemental watering during its recovery. After two years, it should have recovered from the transplant.

Q: How does this contribute to the landscape around the University Park campus?

Flynn: It has been a hard departure in my time around here. When I started here, the elms on the mall were as iconic as iconic can be. A lot of emphasis was placed on maintaining the elms. But as elms have succumbed to a myriad of diseases, we have shifted our focus more towards diversifying the species so that we aren't left with a monoculture of plants. Old Willow plays into that a little bit. It’s another species of tree, that we offer in our overall collection of trees for campus.

We're pretty diverse when it comes to trees on campus. It speaks to the University’s status as almost a tree museum and contributes to the "Tree Campus USA" distinction we’ve received for many years. There’s a large collection of plant material that you don't necessarily always see in your home garden, and it serves as learning opportunities for our young, fledgling horticulturists and landscape architects and others to be able to go out and see some unique species of plants that you might not otherwise see.