Bob Woodruff Park in Plano to host Texas Tree Climbing Championships

Plano’s subdivisions and shopping centers hardly conjure up natural wonder. But a short walk from some mini-mansions, a Chase bank and a Chinese restaurant sits a leafy grove with some of the oldest living organisms in Texas.

There are ashes, elms, pecans and a bur oak believed to have sprouted during Christopher Columbus’ time.

Starting Friday in the bur oak’s shadow, dozens will gather in Bob Woodruff Park for a series of events known as the Texas Tree Climbing Championships. The competition, held each year, serves as a Super Bowl of sorts for tree-service workers. This year’s event will highlight Plano’s ancient grove, part of a robust greenbelt that follows Rowlett Creek from Dallas north into Allen.

“The first thing out of somebody’s mouth when I tell them about the competition is, ‘Are there any trees in Plano?’ ” joked Steve Houser, an arborist and climber who serves on the Dallas Urban Forest Advisory Committee.

Trees elsewhere in North Texas, aided by plentiful water and fertilizer, may grow larger. Yet few match the ages of some of the trees in this Plano grove, which stands in a floodplain and has been protected for centuries from grazing cattle, encroaching development and Mother Nature’s hazards, arborists say.

“We often talk about the past. But when you see these trees, you’re standing in a time machine and looking at the past,” said Pete Smith, who heads a registry of landmark trees for the Texas Forest Service.

Not far from the bur oak stands an ash tree believed to be 300 years old. Next to that is a pecan estimated to be 400 years old. Close by, another massive bur oak of unknown age towers over the forest floor.

Gauging age

Pinpointing ages is tough. The surest way is to examine the tree’s rings, but doing so without damaging the tree is tricky.

Mother Nature offered arborists a glimpse of the big bur oak’s age in 2006, when a storm felled a large branch.

Plano dubbed the tree the “Bicentennial Bur Oak” some years ago as arborists originally estimated the tree to be about 243 years old.

But arborists determined the felled branch was, itself, 226 years old. That forced scientists to increase the tree’s estimated age at more than 500 years.

Other trees in Texas have received more fanfare.

Austin’s Treaty Oak has won prizes and is believed to be at least 500 years old. Another landmark Texas tree, the Goose Island Oak near Corpus Christi, may have germinated a millennium ago.

Methuselah, a sprawling and wrinkled bristlecone pine in California, is celebrated as the world’s oldest. Its age: about 4,800, give or take a century.

Plano’s bur oak, by comparison, has lived in relative obscurity. It dominates a tranquil clearing just out of sight of bustling Park Boulevard.

The aging oak rarely sheds big acorns anymore. Bees have built a nest on a high limb. And arborists have attached a copper rod onto the tree’s spine to shield it from lightning.

But the oak has grown admirers, who take in its sublime splendor like oxygen.

“When you’re 80 feet up in the air and you feel that big ancient giant swaying back and forth in the wind, it’s just utopia,” Houser said. “I just don’t know how else to describe it. All I know is that when you come down, your worries are gone.”

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