Letters

Clear-cutting has been a big topic here [“Sag Harbor Village Board Debates Tree Preservation Legislation; Residents Call for Tougher Rules,” 27east.com, November 15], and because we’re so much further from nature than our immediate ancestors, it might be helpful to remember how big a deal trees are to the character of a place.

In Sag Harbor, we have:

• Descendants of Japanese maples that came from Admiral Perry’s 1854 visit to Japan (241 Main Street).

• Tupelo, which are also called black gum, which can live 650 years.

• European beech, whose beech nuts were eaten by Stone Age people 6,000 years ago and can live to over 350 years old.

• Tulip trees that can grow to 190 feet and have extraordinary flowers that bloom high in their canopies and act as incredible pollinators (which most of us would miss completely, as they start branching at about 40 feet high). One in Nancy Boyd Willey Park originates from a seed from George Washington’s 1793 specimen at Mount Vernon.

• Lindens, whose smell is heady and rich; in Britain, it’s been considered holy since Celtic times, and there they have reached 800 years old.

• American sycamore, aka American plane trees. One of them sheltered a small Shenandoah Valley family in 1744. They date back to the Cretaceous period of 145 million years ago.

• White oaks and swamp white oaks, which feed birds, rabbits, squirrels and deer, and don’t produce acorns until they are about 20 years old.

• Ginkgo biloba trees, which date back to 270 million years, making them living fossils. Six ginkgo trees growing about a mile from the Hiroshima bomb epicenter were among the few things to have survived.

• And empress trees (paulownia tomentosa), whose puffy seeds were used as packing material for Chinese porcelain in the 1800s, and spread all over the United States in shipping containers. Being involved in international trade, you can imagine why we have them here.

To name a few, the variety and provenance of these trees reflects our industry, our ancestors’ lives, our mistakes and achievements, and, obviously, our history. And let’s not ignore natives like lowly locust trees, a weedy, eager grower that may seem dull most of the year but is spectacular in bloom, and feeds many important pollinators in the spring when there is little pollen available.

You can find where these trees are in the free Sag Harbor Walking Tours app, under Remarkable Trees of Sag Harbor.

April Gornik

Sag Harbor