This tree had felt it's death coming since last summers heat. It's main stump had begun to peel. Not a single leaf broke out this year on this sixty foot example of a beautiful tree that had been planted in 1962, at this brick home in Claremore, Oklahoma. Now close to 61 years old, the tree "Liriodendron tulipifera" or a tulip tree, has lived its purposeful life.
The mushrooms have come and gathered at the foot of its boots, these dark round tops on little white legs sprung up by the hundreds, their heads all bowed in solemn respect.
The great shelf mushrooms are stacking themselves up, and outward off of the bark of the tree, signifying the damage already done to poor Jud, and like his body laid out in a coffin , and his fingernails for once being clean, they consume from the inside out, taking the tree for good.
Lynn Riggs wrote the play Oklahoma!
(Green Grow The Lilacs) just a few blocks from here, and Rogers and Hammerstein set it to music, and Claremore has lived and loved the best people, and with it all, the best trees.
Ralph E Peck
Photo by Ralph Peck
Yesterday in Claremore, Oklahoma
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