OT Tappan Oak Tree
Didn't see this anywhere and thought it was interesting:
December 3rd, 2021 at 6:56 AM ^
Replace it with an MGoBlog oak?
December 3rd, 2021 at 7:25 AM ^
Let's hope they put the usable wood to good use. Does Michigan offer Wood Working 101?
December 3rd, 2021 at 7:42 AM ^
Cheap joke. The sororities may have a class on that…
December 3rd, 2021 at 7:46 AM ^
If they milled the wood I wouldn't mind getting a few pieces for a small project. That was a beautiful tree and I had no idea it was that old.
December 3rd, 2021 at 10:55 AM ^
There used to be a pretty sweet student woodworking shop next to the Union in the basement of the SAB, but it shut down in the early 00s. They had an amazing 48" planer.
There's a student accessible shop up on North in the A+A building, but it may only be for the use of A+A students.
December 3rd, 2021 at 12:21 PM ^
No, but both the engineering and art school have a number of wonderful machine shops, usually geared towards metals, and the ME program at least required courses that required you to put in work in the machine shop. And I'm sure the artists spend a ton of time on wood.
December 3rd, 2021 at 1:26 PM ^
Don't think so. I was pretty desperate for classes I could pass when I was a student. I think I would have discovered that one.
December 3rd, 2021 at 1:48 PM ^
Remember that guy in high school that graduated with 22 credits of auto shop?
December 3rd, 2021 at 2:45 PM ^
More high schools should have auto shop and other trades as well . . .
December 3rd, 2021 at 7:26 AM ^
Interesting. How are all the campus squirrels going to survive now? /s
Speaking of oaks, does anyone know how the B-school oak is doing after its expensive relocation when the new Ross school was built?
December 3rd, 2021 at 7:38 AM ^
If you're talking about that old Burr oak that used to be on the Business School grounds, it's still doing quite well at the corner of Tappan and Monroe insofar as I know. One of my brothers-in-law works for UM Facilities - I should ask him to check up on it.
December 3rd, 2021 at 7:43 AM ^
Props for the correct use of brothers-in-law. Well done
December 3rd, 2021 at 7:52 AM ^
My brother-in-laws agree.
December 3rd, 2021 at 7:46 AM ^
Never heard of the b-school oak as b-school grad but I'm sure I would recognize it. Glad they saved it.
December 3rd, 2021 at 7:56 AM ^
I think the transfer happened in the past 10 years, so later than your '96.
Thanks to this thing called the interwebs, I realized I could look it up.
The Biz School Burr Oak is 250 years old, and was moved (!) in 2014. Here's an article, with pictures and a video.
https://www.mlive.com/news/ann-arbor/2014/11/u-m_tree_move_video.html
December 3rd, 2021 at 8:08 AM ^
Oh yeah that tree. Wow, that's a big tree to move. Thanks for sharing that article.
December 3rd, 2021 at 8:37 AM ^
Yeah you would. It's been around there since the school was built. It originally was located just to the east in a partially open courtyard.
December 3rd, 2021 at 8:11 AM ^
Remember when the Alabama fan poisoned Auburns historic oak tree after Auburn won? That's where my head went when I saw the title.
December 3rd, 2021 at 9:21 AM ^
That event moved the Doomsday clock 5 minutes to midnight in my book. People...
December 3rd, 2021 at 8:41 AM ^
at least it hung in there long enough to see us overtake the heathen's from ohio one more time.
December 3rd, 2021 at 9:16 AM ^
Who's going to tell him?
December 3rd, 2021 at 9:02 AM ^
It wasnt poisoned by an OSU fan was it?
December 3rd, 2021 at 9:30 AM ^
I don't even remember which tree this was, but R.I.P. Ever since reading "The Overstory", I don't want humans to touch any tree on Earth.
December 3rd, 2021 at 9:42 AM ^
Wholesale deforestation is one thing, and bad.
But as a forest fire fighter, I learned that trees dying and burned and chopped down—one at a time, with an axe—is part of a healthy life cycle of a forest.
P.S. Most who drive north from Ann Arbor don't realize that the flat fields of lower Michigan was originally fully forested, so thick with trees that it was considered a jungle, virtually impenetrable. Much of the Midwest's housing in the late 1800s-early 1900s came from Saginaw Valley forests.
(For great scenes of early logging and log jams on the river, watch the 1931 movie, Come and Get It.)
December 3rd, 2021 at 11:01 AM ^
I had heard that the tappan oak tree was a safety hazard for students who walk by it. It is next to one of the busiest paths on the Diag.
Supposedly, they check for squirrels when they take it down. There was a cavity nest high in that tree (likely others) - here is a picture from 2018. They were likely wondering who this fool is who is taking pictures of them...
The trees at Ross are doing very well. The one that moved got a ton of TLC and looks better every season.
December 3rd, 2021 at 2:47 PM ^
It was cool what they did at Ross. I remember watching video of it during construction.
December 3rd, 2021 at 2:47 PM ^
It was cool what they did at Ross. I remember watching video of it during construction.
December 3rd, 2021 at 11:56 AM ^
It used to have a red tint at the base from the brick dusting of certain initiates.
December 3rd, 2021 at 1:09 PM ^
When I was a student, that whole bunch of trees would get completely overrun by birds in the winter. Poop everywhere and very unpleasant to walk under and around. You had to keep an eye out for friends dropping behind the main group and then shouting to stir up the birds as you walked under. Future students will never know how easy they have it. Humbug.
[This post brought to you by a fervent desire for you to get off my lawn, whippersnapper.]
December 4th, 2021 at 9:10 AM ^
That is a bit sad to me, as I remember finding the plaque to those trees and then showing it to my son. We both loved the history there. There are so many cool little things like that around campus that I loved finding as a student and later as an alum walking around. Summer is a great time to visit campus.
December 5th, 2021 at 8:19 AM ^
Very sad to see the Tappan Oak go.
I recall that the bark of the Oak had a slight red tinge to it (when I was on campus in the 80s). My older brother, who was a student in the 60s, told me a story that somewhere back in history (well before his time) that students occasionally painted the tree red . . . when they won the big game, maybe? I am a little vague on what the pre-environmental movement tradition was, but the evidence remained decades later, albeit a bit faint and easy to overlook.
Anyway, the old oak had history and I hate to see it disappear from the Diag.