So Long, Liriodendron Tulipefera

The great and beloved 100-year-old tulip tree in Wooster Square never stood a chance at its trial. It appeared to be already half dead.

At the public hearing on its execution on a sedate diagonal walkway of the park Thursday afternoon, tree warden Christy Hass (left) and Cordalie Benoit of Elm City Parks Conservancy agreed the core was dead and the tree would have to come down for reasons of public safety.

It was one of three trees sentenced to die.

The real question was how did the tulip — and by extension so many of the other arboreal beauties in the iconic New Haven park — get gouged in the first place?

Fifteen residents, many members both of Historic Wooster Square as well as the Dwight Wooster Square Management Team, appeared for the hearing. They wanted to know if a pattern of reactive and under-staffed city maintenance was as much the culprit as lightning, disease, and age in the tree’s demise.

“I do love trees,” said Hass, the long-serving deputy director for parks and squares, ​“but I love people more. And this tree could fall and kill a passerby.”

If a hazard is declared, the city can chop immediately. If no hazard, a member of the public can ask for a hearing within ten days of posting a notice to cut down. In this case, Historic Wooster Square’s Beverly Carbonella asked for the hearing.

Hass disarmed her polite but passionate audience by admitting her department is woefully understaffed. She cited the awesome number of trees under her care — 30,000 street trees and two million in parks. Tthe city has but one expert, its arborist, Fernando Lage, in charge of all that.

“And I tell you honestly, that our priority responsibility is our dangerous street trees for obvious reasons of public safety. I feel, as you do, that trees in parks, especially like this one, deserve better care, if only,” she added, ​“because of life span. They are better investment.”

She said in New Haven the average street tree lives seven years, a park tree 30, and a tree in the wild,r 70.

Benoit and other neighbors, such as Bonnie Rosenberg (pictured with Fernando Lage), questioned whether another of the trees sentenced to death, a red maple, was really so dangerous. Lage said that the maple, was struck by lightning, with the ants doing the rest. It was now both starving the nearby trees of light, as well as being in danger for toppling. Underlying the exchanges was the question of overall maintenance and knowledge of the park.

Rosenberg, Benoit, and others described inadequate pruning, no city staff in the park to pick up trash, and grass-cutting machines that come in on what was described as a sometimes thoughtless schedule, even when the grass might be well below the blade line. ​“Still they tear around,” said Benoit, ​“often in and out as fast as they can, and they gouge the base of the trees.

She and Peter Webster, also a neighborhood activist, pointed out another red maple, not nearly as old as the one to come down. Its bark was so soft, he could stick his car keys in it. A gouge made by a rushing mower had started the decay, theys aid.

“There are trees in worse shape in the park,” said Benoit. ​“They declared these three a hazard and decided to take them down without a sense of the whole. The city has never done a survey.”

If it had, she suggested, and if it had the expertise they should possess, it could just look, as she and a reporter did then, at the top of a large elm at the north end of the park. ​“A tree’s health can be determined at the top, the first five feet.

“That branch at the top is all gone, dead. Others are dying. It’s an elm, in bad shape. It could be diseased and spreading the disease to the elms on the Green. When will they take care of this?”

Hass said she and Lage receive 40 calls a day about trees. ​“In many cases, we rush out to protect trees from people who want to take them down, and who might already have begun because they don’t want acorns or whatever dropping. Our rule of thumb is that if someone destroys a tree, let’s say, 18 inches in diameter on a city street, they must replace it with the same number of inches, nine trees, each two inches in diameter. We are protectors of trees. We are not takers down of trees unless it’s necessary.”

Hass came armed with a letter confirming her opinion by Chris Donnelly, the urban forestry coordinator from the State Department of Environmental Protection.

Both Hass and neighbors came not only to cut these trees but to plant new ones. She vowed that the three would be replaced by what she called legacy trees, more impressive ones than street trees, and likely at least as a new tulip to replace the giant to fall.

“What exactly is going to happen?” everyone wanted to know. You got the feeling they were talking about a living friend, not just a tree.

Hass explained that the tulip was too large and tall for city equipment. An outside contractor will come in, likely within 30 days, cut it down, then grind the stump into chips. The same to the two others. Before and after, community meetings will be held to discuss the successors. Benoit, not only a lawyer, but a holder of a degree in forest management from Yale, said she will provide the city her own survey of the trees of Wooster Square. Marianne Mazan, on the Historic District Commission, said she will attend to make sure the historic tree line is maintained in the replanting.

Hass and Lage said that while more care is required of the trees, the city slack is being picked up by new relationships with Urban Resources Institute. URI, under contract with the city, plants, cares, for and guarantees the new trees to be planted.

According to arborist Lage, watering trees in the first year is critical. ​“Their roots are often bundled in burlap, and they need to have a chance to take hold. At least an inch of water a week during the first year.”

The gathering ended not in the spirit of burying trees but praising them, and much else that makes Wooster Park unique. Hass agreed to have her staff be more careful with the mulching and to work with Rosenberg, Benoit, and Webster and others on fences and bench replacements as well.

“Let’s not snipe at each other,” she declared. ​“The 1960s are over. Let’s have a ​‘tree militia.”

Forestry professionals are taught, Chris Donnelly wrote, to perpetuate the forest rather than the individual tree. For now, so long liriodendron tulipefera. And thanks for your hundred-plus years.