Return of the Eight-Foot Cookie

Posted in Around the Garden on May 8 2013, by Matt Newman

The tree cookie is back! Though you’d be forgiven for having no idea what I’m talking about. As a matter of fact, very few of us around the office have seen this section of sequoia up close and personal—at least until now. But with the Everett Children’s Adventure Garden rolling out this classic display after such a long absence, I figure it makes sense to reintroduce everyone.

The history is the simple bit. We start with a brief definition: Tree Cookie — noun — A horizontal round cut from a tree trunk. It’s the cross-section that allows arborists and botanists to pin down the exact age of a tree by counting off the concentric rings in the wood. It also provides clues to the life of the tree based on the density of the rings, anomalies in shapes and patterns within the wood, and other unique signifiers pointing to a healthy or harried history. For reference, we’ve got over 1,600 rings worth of trunk data to parse in this one tree cookie alone. That places the tree’s start at around the year 223!

At nearly nine feet in diameter, two feet thick, and clocking 2,500 pounds on the scale, our section of giant sequoia—the largest tree species on Earth—hails from California’s Sequoia National Park. And sure, that sounds huge by any standard, but were you to visit the park, you’d find much larger trees—some up to 35 feet wide and 300 feet tall. Relatively small by comparison, the tree from whence our sample came fell of natural causes in 1917, though it wasn’t until 1931 that the cookie made its way from Oakland to the NYBG. It then spent several months drying out for display. While this was taking place, Garden staff kept cracks under control with a hefty steel cable wrapped around the circumference.

Smoothing and finishing the bare wood came next.

Since then, the tree cookie has seen its fair share of moving about. It spent much of its early life on display in the Library Building. A later expansion of the Herbarium called for some reorganization, and by the mid-20th century our specimen was spending most of its time in storage. Not the most auspicious place for such a unique artifact, I know. But the Garden feels that now is the time to make up for lost years and bring our cookie back into the public eye.

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Of course, it’s no cakewalk to haul this giant around. If you can imagine trying to move a kiddie pool that weighs as much as a full-size pickup truck, you’re in the right ballpark. But our staff is resourceful, and with some elbow grease (and no small amount of operational know-how), the tree cookie now enjoys a new home just outside the Adventure Garden’s Discovery Center. From there, it’ll teach thousands of young visitors about dendrochronology and tree structure. That’s not to mention how good it looks, period. So if you’ve ever wanted to see history—centuries of it—played out before your eyes, make a stop and scope out this natural artifact. You might learn a thing or two, and anyway, it’s just plain neat.