| National Champion
Coast Live Oak Julian, California |
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PHOTO CA Big Tree Register crown spread: 75 feet |
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Before he takes cuttings from their wind-twisted limbs, Terry Mock reflects on the grandeur of the nation's oldest trees and how they connect us to history.
He stands in the shade of a 500-year-old coast live oak near Julian, imagining the tree being a mere sapling around the time Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo landed at Point Loma, the first European in California. Pulling out his pruning shears to take a cutting, Mock pauses and studies the regal oak as a shaman might regard a sacred mountain.
"We always ask for the tree's permission," he said.
For five years, Mock, 52, executive director of the Champion Tree Project, has traveled from mountains to the seas to obtain cuttings from trees considered the nation's best. The cuttings are placed in rooting solutions—a form of cloning—and propagated before being transplanted at "sanctuary" sites to ensure their preservation.
"What we're creating is like a Jurassic Park for trees, except we're not waiting until they go extinct. We get to them and clone them before they can go extinct," he said.
One of the project's goals, Mock said, is to produce genetically superior trees capable of withstanding pollution, global warming and other climatic rigors in the 21st century.
He chooses specimens on the National Register of Big Trees, a roster of about 800 superior individual specimens continuously updated since 1940. The list is maintained by American Forests, a 126-year-old nonprofit group dedicated to preserving historical trees. Mock has tracked down so-called champion trees—specimens of a particular species with the largest dimensions—at prisons, cemeteries and even parking lots framed by skyscrapers.
This week, Mock's quest for the Hercules of oaks brought him to the San Diego backcountry, where he was escorted to a ranch off a narrow one-lane road. There, surrounded by a meadow of yellow, knee-high deer grass and native chaparral, resides the nation's champion coast live oak.
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The tree—the largest coast live oak known to exist—measures 28 feet around the trunk. It is approximately 58 feet high and has a canopy that spans 75 feet. With moss-covered branches that look like writhing serpents, the oak could be cast as a Hollywood horror-movie tree.
"You cannot walk up to a tree like this without feeling a sense of awe," Mock said.
The arboreal masterpiece was discovered in 1999 by Clint Powell, a Julian native and naturalist. He speculates the ancient oak survived in part because none of the early settlers had a saw long enough to cut through its trunk.
Roughly 97 percent of the old-growth forests that once covered the United States are gone, and many of the remaining trees are scrawny relatives of grandiose grandparents. Most of the trees in the coastal sage scrub and high chaparral of San Diego's east county are old-growth oaks, Powell said.
After photographing the champion oak, Mock unholsters his pruning shears and takes samples from parts of the tree. When he's finished, seven Styrofoam coolers are filled with cuttings, which are placed on ice. They were taken to the Tree of Life Nursery in San Juan Capistrano, where plant experts will attempt to get them to root.
The Champion Tree Project is dedicated to preserving the world's hardiest, most beautiful ornamental trees. Mock relies on cloning rather than acorns to propagate the next generation of shade trees he considers crucial to creating "sustainable urban forests."
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To remain financially stable, the nonprofit group eventually intends to offer its hall-of-fame trees for sale to the public.
"We're going to be the Ralph Lauren of trees," said Mock, a former real estate developer who became a native plant expert.
The typical street trees shading America's sidewalks have a life span of 7 to 10 years. Too many trees are dying and not being replaced, which means less oxygen and more polluted runoff for our cities, he said.
"We're treating our trees like wallpaper; every 10 years we're putting new ones up," he says. "What we need is bigger trees living longer in urban environments."
But some scientists, including Dr. Roger Funk, chief research scientist for the Davey Tree Co. headquartered in Kent, Ohio, question whether so-called champion trees are genetically superior to others of the same species.
"You cannot make the claim that champion trees will carry the same characteristics to a site different than where the original was found," Funk said. "We don't have the science behind us yet to say that.
"A tree is a captive of its environment," he said. "Basically, the expression of a tree's genetics is highly dependent on the conditions where it is rooted."
The Champion Tree Project has replicated about 50 of the nation's most spectacular trees, and so far the clones are proving to be as hardy as any produced by commercial nurseries, according to Mock.
"The crux of the question is: Are these champion trees champions because of their genetic makeup or their environment," said Mock. "We think it's both."
Is a tree's resistance to environmental stress a genetic trait that can be passed along via the clones of the champion trees?
"We're trying to find out," said Mock. "We should know the results in a couple hundred years."
© 2001 Union-Tribune Publishing Co.
