White Oak

WYE MILLS -- Many mighty oaks have grown from little acorns dropped by Maryland's Wye Oak during its 450-year life span, but state foresters have begun a difficult grafting process they hope will produce the tree's first genetically pure offspring.As a small group of guests watched from the ground Friday, a forester some 60 feet overhead in a bucket carefully cut several handfuls of new limb growth, the initial step in what could be a 20-year process to develop a clone of the historic tree.

Property owners in Harford County with streams or creeks on their land are eligible to receive a free package of seedling trees through a new program designed to improve water quality in the Chesapeake Bay. Known as the Backyard Buffers Program, it seeks to increase the number of soil-penetrating trees along bay tributaries on small properties. For years, the Maryland Department of Natural Resources Forest Service has organized the planting of trees on large properties as a way to establish forested areas with root systems capable of holding soil in place and preventing erosion, but many properties where erosion is a problem are relatively small and don't lend themselves to large-scale tree plantings.

Now that the remains of the 460-year-old Wye Oak have been trucked away to a Kent Island warehouse to await their fate, the race is under way in earnest to find a replacement tree. Enthusiasts are searching for a tree to venerate that is similar in lineage and girth to the Wye Oak, a white oak that yielded its national championship status to a violent thunderstorm this month. Joseph M. Coale III, 58, author, historian and preservationist, wonders about his candidate, a majestic white oak - Quercus alba - that has stood guard over what is now Bellona Avenue in Ruxton for at least 350 years, and maybe as long as 375 years.

Another episode, another plan to kill Klaus gone awry.   The gang (Stefan, Damon, Alaric, Elena, Caroline and even Matt is a part of the group in this episode) turns the Wickery Bridge sign made of wood from an old white oak tree into stakes so they can try to kill Klaus. Because the originals are all linked from the spell their mother put on them (i.e. if one dies, they all die), they the plan is "if you see an original, kill an original. "   Amazingly the plan works, and they are able to kill Finn.

As the Rev. John O'Brien of Bel Air put it, the Earth moved when the massive white oak came crashing down in last Thursday's storm."I think it's just a sentimental loss for the people of Bel Air," O'Brien, associate pastor of St. Margaret's Church on Hickory Avenue, said of the demise of the mighty tree on property leased by the church. "You hate to see large trees go," he said.O'Brien or other officials did not know the height of the oak. O'Brien said church officials thought it was about 400 years old.Wayne K. Merkel, a state forester who works in Harford County, said state records indicated the tree was about 300 years old. It probably was the oldest and largest white oak in Bel Air, he said.

PHILADELPHIA -- The White Oak Dance Project, a touring company founded last year by Mikhail Baryshnikov, is unusual on a number of levels.The company has given a ballet pyrotechnist and star, Mr. Baryshnikov, the chance to explore an entirely different dance form. It has given Mark Morris, whose work the troupe performs, a new instrument for the choreography that has made him a leading American modern dance artist. The project makes use of some of the best -- and most seasoned -- dancers in the country.

The king is dead. Long live the king. As mourners filed by the remains of the venerable Wye Oak, felled by a violent thunderstorm Thursday afternoon, state forestry officials declared a Harford County tree yesterday to be the largest surviving white oak in Maryland. The 102-foot giant, inhabited by a tangle of blacksnakes, stands on a farm near Norrisville. It is more than nine feet smaller in girth than the Wye Oak, and 36 feet narrower at the crown. But forestry officials who fanned out yesterday to re-measure the three top contenders for the crown - in Harford, Talbot and Calvert counties - had no doubt about the results.

Even as the remains of the Wye Oak are being carved into a gubernatorial desk, commemorative crab mallets and various works of art, a tree in southern Virginia was named this week to succeed the fallen Maryland landmark as the biggest white oak in the nation. Towering 86 feet above Bothwick Hall, the 270-year-old home of George and Mary Robinson in Warfield, Va., the stately tree doesn't quite measure up to the vanished sentinel of tiny Wye Mills, Md. The Wye Oak was 96 feet tall and nearly 32 feet in girth before it was toppled June 6, 2002, by a fierce thunderstorm.

Mayor Earl A. J. "Tim" Warehime Jr. proclaimed the white oak the official tree of the town of Manchester during Wednesday's Town Council meeting."We have probably the second oldest white oak in the state," he said.That oak appears on the town seal.Manchester has a second connection with the white oak. The late Earl L. Yingling, a longtime town resident, was chief caretaker of the Wye Oak on the Eastern Shore.Councilwoman Charlotte Collett said yesterday the town may plant white oak seedlings as part of its Arbor Day celebrations this spring.

2nd Wye Oak offspring planted at mansionANNAPOLIS -- The governor's mansion got a new white oak tree yesterday, after the previous one -- a descendant of the Eastern Shore's great Wye Oak -- was severely damaged in ice storms last winter.The state planted a white oak sapling more than 6 feet tall on the west lawn next to a plaque commemorating the first tree. Both were grown from acorns gathered from Maryland's official tree, a white oak in Wye Mills.The Wye Oak, at least 400 years old, is the nation's oldest white oak.The white oak that previously graced the lawn of the governor's mansion was seven years old. The state cut it down in February because of the damage.

Visitors to the Maryland Zoo in Baltimore have often had to search a towering white oak to spot the zoo's two prized African leopards, Amari and Hobbes, which frequently scaled the trunk and took to the branches. The cats would each perch on a sturdy limb that gave the best view of a boardwalk filled with people and the neighboring enclosure co-habited by zebras, ostriches and two white rhinos. It was as close to living in the wild as two cats could get. But by the end of Saturday, only a stump will remain of their favorite spot.

A 200-year-old white oak that sparked a statewide conservation effort in 1989 and led engineers to reroute an Annapolis thoroughfare will soon be turned into firewood. Split in half by an October windstorm, the tree remains visible to thousands of commuters every day on Aris. T. Allen Boulevard, where it has stood as a symbol for preservationists. But Jerry Blackwell, who owns the property now, said he will have what's left of the tree removed. He spent about $3,000 trying to preserve it with metal cords and chemicals to restrict its growth, hoping it wouldn't be weighed down.

Tendrils of smoke curled around Dale German as he heated the base of a knife with a blowtorch and slid the red-hot blade into place atop an oak handle. The leathery hands of the 60-year-old Baltimore woodworker moved slowly and carefully because the material he was using was no ordinary wood. He was crafting an oyster knife from the recycled body of what was Maryland's oldest resident, the fabled Wye Oak. The official state tree towered over the Eastern Shore for more than four centuries before being toppled by a thunderstorm in June 2002.

WASHINGTON - The House of Representatives approved an amendment yesterday that would consolidate four Food and Drug Administration labs and offices into an $88.7 million campus on the grounds of the former naval base in White Oak, Md. The amendment was added to a spending bill for the Treasury and Transportation departments that the House passed with a 397-12 vote. It would allow the FDA to proceed with plans to create a facility with office and research space for more than 7,700 employees.

In Montgomery County Woman found stabbed to death in White Oak WHITE OAK -- A Montgomery County woman died of stab wounds yesterday morning after what might have been a domestic dispute, police said. About 2 a.m., officers investigated noise in an apartment in the 1500 block of Heather Hollow Circle in White Oak. When police entered the apartment, they found a man and a woman with stab wounds. Both were taken to local hospitals. County police had not released the victims' names yesterday.

PRESTON -- The Wye Oak, long regarded as the nation's tallest white oak tree, is about to be turned into a desk. And a vase. And a mobile. And a picture frame. And dolls. And whatever else may sprout from the imaginations of the 250 or so Marylanders who showed up yesterday and last week at a state nursery in Caroline County to claim many of the 15,000 pieces of the Maryland landmark that toppled June 6, 2002, in a thunderstorm. The white oak had stood for an estimated 460 years in the Eastern Shore village of Wye Mills, about 30 miles away.

Another episode, another plan to kill Klaus gone awry.   The gang (Stefan, Damon, Alaric, Elena, Caroline and even Matt is a part of the group in this episode) turns the Wickery Bridge sign made of wood from an old white oak tree into stakes so they can try to kill Klaus. Because the originals are all linked from the spell their mother put on them (i.e. if one dies, they all die), they the plan is "if you see an original, kill an original. "   Amazingly the plan works, and they are able to kill Finn.

Even as the remains of the Wye Oak are being carved into a gubernatorial desk, commemorative crab mallets and various works of art, a tree in southern Virginia was named this week to succeed the fallen Maryland landmark as the biggest white oak in the nation. Towering 86 feet above Bothwick Hall, the 270-year-old home of George and Mary Robinson in Warfield, Va., the stately tree doesn't quite measure up to the vanished sentinel of tiny Wye Mills, Md. The Wye Oak was 96 feet tall and nearly 32 feet in girth before it was toppled June 6, 2002, by a fierce thunderstorm.