Stewardship Manager Dennis Briede contributes this guest blog post about an ancient and amazing tree right in our own backyard.
When one thinks of huge trees, the ones that first come to mind are the mighty redwood trees or the giant sequoias, but New Jersey has some colossal trees of its own. Back in 1978, I noticed a very large tree in a field off Route 46 in Mount Olive. I had to investigate, and it turned out to be a huge white ash tree. Years later, I started working as the Stewardship Manager at the Land Conservancy of New Jersey, which had purchased the property on which the huge ash tree stood. I had to measure the tree—at the time, it measured about 19 feet around.
Recently I called Joe Bennett, the regional NJ state forester. I met him at the tree, and we measured it at almost 21 feet around at 4.5 feet above the ground (the official measuring height). This tree is 76 feet tall with a crown spread of 99 feet! This monster is only 6 inches shy of the record-holding white ash tree in New Jersey. It is the second largest white ash tree in Morris County and the third largest in the state. But the most amazing thing about the Wolfe Tree is this: it’s about 400 years old!
The history of this tree goes back to about 1624, before New Jersey was a state. This tree began growing when only the native Lenni Lenape lived in the area. The land now known as New Jersey has been inhabited by Indigenous peoples for over 10,000 years. The ancestors of the Lenape, often referred to as the Delaware, were a network of individual nations whose traditional homelands once covered a vast area along the eastern seaboard, including parts of present-day New Jersey, Delaware, Pennsylvania, and New York.
The birth of this tree goes back before the first permanent Dutch settlement in New Jersey, which was established in 1630 at Bergen Square, now known as Jersey City. The birth of this tree goes back 71 years before the first European settlement in the area, known as Morris County. This tree’s birth goes back before the flagship of the Massachusetts Bay Company arrived in Salem. Before Galileo published his final book on physics. Back when Rembrandt was 18 years old.
Based on our findings, the Wolfe Tree is large enough to be included in the official New Jersey Big and Heritage Tree Registry. The registry has been kept since the 1930s and helps document big, heritage, and noteworthy trees in the state, and it also documents the changes these big trees have undergone over almost a century of time. Joe has entered the Wolfe Tree’s statistics, photographs, and location into their database. It has now been classified as a Signature Tree, which is characterized by unique features and aesthetics. Trees of this caliber are rare and should be maintained and protected as often as possible. Trees of this size are mega resources and perform 600 times the environmental benefits of your average tree.
Over the past decade, ash trees have been attacked by the ash borer insects, which are slowly decimating these beautiful and important trees. As a labor of love, Brian O’Neill of Weeds Inc. (located in Bethlehem, PA) has been inoculating the Wolfe Tree for several years in order to protect it. Hopefully it will continue to live and be enjoyed by all long into the future.
The next time you drive east on Route 46 in Mount Olive between Naughright Road and Wolfe Road, look to the right at the edge of the field and gaze at this natural wonder, which is located in the northern section of our South Branch Preserve.
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