Trees have stories too. The ARTrees team is collecting these to include as part of the information shared in the app we are developing. Do you have a story you can share with us? Please contact me: youngs.6@osu.edu.
A great example story we have collected is this one from Christopher D. Cook, who was present in 2016 when the historic, Constitution Tree was removed. He wrote about it on his blog:
“Having stood for more than a quarter of a millennium, this sycamore was a true witness tree. It was surely home to countless generations of squirrels, birds, and insects through its long life and well loved by humans, too. When Native Americans walked the banks of the Olentangy River (Keenhongsheconsepung as they called it), gathering flint, the tree must have been just another sycamore among an expansive forest of hardwoods. The tree stood silently as hundreds of slaves slipped by its outstretched branches following a nearby Underground Railroad path to freedom. Its bright green leaves might have felt the heat from the flames that consumed the nineteenth-century Armory building, a few hundred feet to the east, on a June day in 1958. Ohio State’s Constitution Tree lived with the students of every class since the first graduated in 1878.” ...read more on Christopher D. Cook’s blog