One of the friends of the blog, a reader from Virginia who goes by the pseudonym of St. George Tucker, has sent along this story about a pear tree planted in Massachusetts around 1630. It's still around. Very cool.
Cribbing from the conclusion to the article:
Although its pears have been described as "medium in size, unattractive, and coarse textured," the tree's shortcomings have been more than made up for by its resilience -- a legacy that will carry on even after the sands of time eventually wither its branches. The USDA's National Clonal Germplasm Repository, a seed bank, successfully produced a clone of Endicott's pear tree.
There are few surviving remnants of those earliest days in American history, when European settlers arrived to the wild lands of the New World. But as their centuries-old headstones have weathered and crumbled with time, and their names and stories have become lost to the ages, it's reassuring to know that history is rooted by more than human memory and fading ink -- and that a living monument has been fruitful through it all.
Reminds me of the London Grove Friends Meeting Oak, which I've used to illustrate this post.
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