Looking Up

Planted circa 1920, this American elm tree was largely overlooked until the April 19, 1995, terrorist attack that killed 168. Battered by the blast and scarred with shrapnel, what is now known as the Survivor Tree was nearly cut down. Still, it endured, thriving at the memorial site as a symbol of resilience. Its seedlings are now planted around the world, from the Fort Hood Memorial in Texas to the White House.

There are taller trees and those with wider trunks, but none rivals this giant sequoia’s volume. It’s around 2,200 years old and towers more than 274 feet. A utopian colony at the site in the 1880s anointed it Karl Marx. Following their expulsion to make way for a national park in the 1890s, it was rechristened after the Civil War general. Threatened by California’s wildfires, in 2021, General Sherman was wrapped in foil to protect it from a devastating blaze.

Beneath this live oak in 1863, the Emancipation Proclamation was read in the South for the first time. Free Black woman Mary Peake had started leading classes under it in 1861 amid the Civil War, defying bans on the education of Black people. The tree became a haven for enslaved people who escaped Confederate territory. Those roots grew into Hampton University, with the branches of the old oak still sprawling further each year.

This post oak overlooking the Arkansas River was an important gathering place for the Muscogee people in 1836 after the Trail of Tears. Ashes were taken from the final Muscogee ceremonial fires in Alabama before this forced relocation were placed here. In 2025, the tree was part of a repatriation of land by the city to the stewardship of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation.

When Apollo 14 circled the moon in 1971, it carried a container of 500 seeds. These space travelers were planted across the U.S., mostly at community sites. The sycamore above, planted in 1976 at Lincoln State Park in Spencer County, Indiana, is one of the many earthside links to the ingenuity of space exploration. The program was largely forgotten until NASA planetary scientist Dave Williams began tracking down moon trees in the mid-1990s, identifying around 100.

The largest banyan in the U.S. had just marked its 150th birthday when a deadly wildfire swept through the town of Lahaina in August 2023. Its trunks which spread over a city block, were charred; its green canopy was a lifeless gray. Yet tree experts noticed that its lower trunks still had living tissue. By September, new leaves were on the tree. Its care is now part of a reforestation initiative to bring back Maui’s native trees and cultivate community healing.