It takes good genes, good planting
and good luck to grow a giant
by Marjorie E. Gage, Country Living, February 3, 2002
What's the single-best investment we can make in the earth?
Simple: Plant a tree for posterity.
"But not just any tree," emphasizes David Milarch, a nurseryman in Traverse City, Michigan. "You've got to plant the right tree, in the right place, under the right conditions."
It is a generous and noble act to plant a tree that will provide cleaner air, protective shade, topsoil, windbreak, autumn color, comfort, and beauty for future generations. It is also a leap of faith today, when a tree planted in an urban environment can be expected to live an average of just seven to ten years.
"All across America, our trees are dying prematurely. Our hardwood forsts are being buldozed. Insect pests, acid rain, and weather changes are killing our street trees. And we're all in big trouble if we don't do something about it right now," says Mr. Milarch.
In 1996, he and his sons, the fourth generation of Milarch's to enter the family's shade tree business, founded the Champion Tree Project, a non-profit with a mission "to protect, preserve, propagate, and plant our national champion big trees." Something in the genetic material of these venerable giants, the Milarchs hypothesize, has helped them to withstand centuries of attack by the very elements that have destroyed weaker trees. Its just common sense, they say, to study these survivors.
When it comes to trees, bigger is better. Healthy, mature trees clean the air of more pollutants, provide more oxygen, and do a superior job of controlling soil erosion than saplings and weak trees can, But 400 years of ice, insect invasions, wind, fire, drought, land clearing, lumbering, and urbanization have taken their toll on this continent's virgin forests, and the trees left behind are not only too few in number, but too small in size.
"For years, tree producers and nurserymen have been raising and planting trees based primarily on their beauty at a very young age, with no thought to their longevity, disease resistance, susceptibility to environmental stresses, or optimal planting conditions," admits David Milarch. "It isn't good."
By harvesting buds from "champion trees"—the biggest, strongest, and often oldest trees of their kind—and grafting them onto rootstocks of the same species, arborists from the Champion Tree Project produce saplings that possess the identical genetic makeup of their long-lived parents.
Will these trees, when planted in their native region, become champions, too? No one knows. It would be better in the long run, say critics of cloning, to grow trees from the seeds of the giants, rather than planting clones that limit biodiversity, and may, in the long run, make an entire species more susceptible to disease. Few question the validity of the Champion Tree Project's ultimate cause, however, or the strength of its founders' convictions.
"We've got to preserve our trees and create sustainable forests," says David Milarch. "Champion trees give us the best chance we've got. They are the best of the best, and if they can't make it—well, I don't want to go there."
This April, the Champion Tree Project and the National Tree Trust, a public agency devoted to tree conservation, will plant 12 Red Ash trees at the Pentagon, in Washington, DC, in memory of those who lost their lives in the events of September 11, 2001. For further details on the ceremony—as well as information on how to determine the best trees to plant in your area—visit
