THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, November 3, 1996 TAG: 9611030032
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B4 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY GUY FRIDDELL, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: NORFOLK LENGTH: 51 lines
A giant willow oak that's been around 300 years has to come to the ground in a Norfolk backyard because it's shoving a house off-kilter.
That age places its roots within the 17th century, when Algonquin Indians roamed Virginia.
The estimate comes from Cody Bedford, who will direct this week's job of topping the huge oak of 13 mighty limbs, each as big as a good-sized tree, and then felling the tremendous boll of the trunk.
He will count rings at the base when the job's done at a cost of $4,000. Active in Bedford Tree Service, whose roots are deep in pruning, spraying and removing trees, Bedford said he has never seen a tree as large as the one behind a modest dwelling on Lafayette Boulevard east of Norfolk's Five Points.
Dominick Still, a Realtor, bought the house as an investment. Viewing the oak from the far side of the house, he said last week, he had not realized that its roots had lifted the corner off the cinderblock foundation. Renovation of the house requires removal of the tree.
Oaks don't soar and spear the sky like pines. They grow outward, embracing their surroundings as they mature. This one extends its branches in a huge hug. But it's tall enough that birds, moving among its top branches, appear to be in their own ecosystem, another world, the inner sphere of a fretted green canopy of slim finger-sized leaves trembling against blue sky.
To suggest it is the tree that ate a house would be flagrant. Rather, the dark, massive trunk pressing against the frame house, exerting strength through the life force swelling upward from its veined roots, is that of a stallion, catching someone against the paddock and leaning with negligent, mischievous might against that puny being.
Placing a hand against the tree's dark flank, one seems to be touching a great, ever-living beast. But there's a feeling, too, of structure, architecture even. Running lengthwise up the trunk are eight seams between bulging Doric columns.
To look up at the crown, held aloft by a swirl of writhing branches, is to see a forest set apart.
Safety is a concern in having it removed. Still said he had found every resident on that side of the block glad to have it done. A lightning strike could bring a limb smashing through a roof, Bedford noted. From the top he could see the trunk was hollow.
``We did everything we could to try to keep it there and renovate the house,'' Still said, ``but there was no way possible to keep it from pushing the foundation. I am going to plant another oak.''
Cities need an official with an eye to point out spots of beauty that should be saved - such as a stand of pines colonized by egrets in Virginia Beach that was leveled. We need another Fred Heutte who envisioned and nurtured what is now the Norfolk Botanical Garden. by CNB