The Biggest Winners

Artist collects images of ‘champion trees’

— You might want to wait until I scare the snakes off,” the farmer told Linda Williams Palmer. “Some of them are as big around as my arm.”

“He was a big ol’ husky man with an arm as big around as my leg,” Palmer remembers.

“And I’m scared to death of snakes.”

Undeterred, the 70-yearold Hot Springs artist - still dressed in white slacks and sandals from an art club appearance - waited until the farmer had stomped around in his boots, then climbed out of the four-wheel drive pickup to get the photo she wanted.

The subject of her quest was a tree - a 140-foot-tall loblolly pine - and the experience was really nothing new. Palmer has traveled all over Arkansas in the last six years, searching out the state’s “champion trees.” Her 53 photographs have become 18 colored pencil drawings - huge and intricate - on show in the reading room at the Fayetteville Public Library and at the Botanical Garden of the Ozarks in Fayetteville. Along with her drawings, Palmer has also included detailed drawings of foliage, representative photographs of the trees and text panels that tell some of the stories she’s heard along the way.

The state’s champion catalpa tree, on a farm near Prattsville, is one that has a quite a history, she says by way of example.

“The owner had lived in Prattsville all of his life and told us that behind the tree is a yearround spring that flows into a little lake,” she recalls. “The stagecoach line used to stop right there because they knew they’d always find water.”

Palmer didn’t know anything about champion trees when she serendipitously started herquest. Long a tree lover, the Fort Smith native had entered a colored pencil drawing of a tree in an art exhibition and got a “delightful letter” from a fan in Texarkana. Palmer’s drawing was titled “Great Mother Tree,” and her correspondent wrote that she knew where the “Great Father Tree” was located near Keo.

“She proceeded to give me this wonderful itinerary” that included lunch, antiques and even a place to buy pecans during the road trip. Palmer conscripted a friend, and off they went.

“When we got to the tree, it was fabulous,” she remembers, “a huge, huge bur oak.” She was describing it later to a friend, who said, “Well, Linda, I bet it’s on the Champion Tree list.”

Champion trees, according to Patti Erwin of the Arkansas Forestry Commission in Fayetteville, are simply the biggest that have beennominated and recorded since the program started in 1978.

The designation is based on height, spread of the canopy and diameter of the trunk, she says, but only noninvasive attempts are made to determine a tree’s age.

“Every species is different in how it grows, and it also depends on soil and those kinds of things, so we really can’t tell age unless we core the tree andcount the rings,” she explains, “and we don’t want to do that.”

Opening the tree to core it can lead to insects and disease, she says. “But we can talk to people that know the history of the community or have records of a tree planted in honor of somebody. Or sometimes we can find old maps and aerial photographs that show the tree.

“Any tree that makes this list is definitely an older tree.”

Arkansas currently boasts 131 champion trees, a couple of which are also included on a national register through American Forests.

“What’s so cool,” Erwin says, “is some of those trees are growing in the best soil in the nation, so they’re just humongous!”

Palmer is happy to continueto record the trees in her home state in her drawings and by working with AETN on a documentary scheduled for release in August. She’s got 12 exhibits scheduled over the next two years - including one set for Sept. 8-Oct. 26 at the University of Arkansas at Fort Smith - and will continue her work “at a more relaxed pace”as long as she can.

“I have always loved trees as far as looking at them, drawing them, painting them,” she says.

I grew up on farm in Oklahoma, playing in a wooded area, so this is just a continuation of how I felt about them as a child.

“But now I’m learning so much more about the trees,” she adds. “I thought they were magical before, but as I’m learning about how important they are to our very existence, they really are magical!

“It’s an adventure! I’m 70 years old this year and never dreamed that I would be having so much fun at this time in my life. Years ago, I thought 70 was old. Now it’s 90!”

Whats Up, Pages 18 on 01/18/2013

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