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CNN Sunday Morning
Arbor Day Seeks to Determine National Tree
Aired April 22, 2001 - 10:16 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: We have a national bird, the eagle, even though Benjamin Franklin wanted the turkey. There's a national flower, I'm not sure what it is, maybe I'll ask our next guest. But no national tree for the U.S. On this, the 32nd Earth Day, the Arbor Day Foundation is seeking to change that and it is allowing you, the people, to make the choice in time for the annual Arbor Day observance on Friday. We welcome John Rosenow to our program to tell us about the project. He is president of the National Arbor Day Foundation. He joins us from Omaha, where Arbor Day began in 1872.
Welcome to the program.
JOHN ROSENOW, NATIONAL ARBOR DAY FOUNDATION: Thank you, Miles, nice to be here.
O'BRIEN: Take us back to that first Arbor Day, 1872, Omaha. Just give me a little history on that, I'm curious.
ROSENOW: Well, the state of Nebraska at that time was a pretty raw prairie, pretty open place, and most of the people who were pioneers at the time were from the East, used to the wooded areas that they had grown up their whole lives.
And a gentleman named J. Sterling Morton of Nebraska City had the idea for a holiday for planting trees. His name was Arbor Day. He picked a day in the spring, a good planting time, and offered prizes for the farm families and the counties that planted the most trees. And on the first Arbor Day, more than a million trees were planted in Nebraska.
The idea quickly spread to neighboring states and finally nationwide and actually to many countries now around the world.
O'BRIEN: Are there any trees that you know of in Nebraska that are identified as some of the original trees that were planted, do you know?
ROSENOW: Yes, there are trees at Arbor Day Farm, at Arbor Lodge in Nebraska City that were planted at that same time.
O'BRIEN: How big are they now?
ROSENOW: They're 100 feet plus. There are some lovely trees that are, one of Morton's comments was that tree planting is something that everyone can do, from the poorest to the richest person, and those trees grow pretty much the same. So, there are some wonderful trees from that era.
O'BRIEN: Trees know nothing about net worth. By the way, do you know what the national flower is? I'm putting you on the spot.
ROSENOW: It's the rose, as a matter of a fact.
O'BRIEN: A rose, of course. A rose is a rose by any other name. Let's go to the Web site for just a moment and checkout what you've got going on here.
This is the site, ArborDay.org is the location. It's got a lot of other stuff on here which you'll find of interest if you are interested in trees and preserving them, and the environment in general. But then, if you go to this portion, hit the hot button that says "Vote for the National Tree," there are several choices, and the possibility of a write-in.
ROSENOW: Exactly.
O'BRIEN: It looks like about 20 choices there. John, how did -- was this a difficult thing to come up with the choices, because there's so many species of trees in this country, right?
ROSENOW: Well, in terms of the potential candidates, America has an embarrassment of riches. We have hundreds of species of trees, more than twice the number in all of Europe, and we had to come up with a reasonable way of paring down that list, so we picked all the state trees and selected what are known as genera rather than species, oak or pine or the broad categories of trees which grow broadly throughout the country.
So, we used all the state trees as the candidates, although again, you can write in your favorite if you have another.
O'BRIEN: Alright, now, if you were to pick the national tree purely on population, would it be the pine tree, that category?
ROSENOW: As far as the number of species?
O'BRIEN: Yeah, or just the number of individuals, if you will.
ROSENOW: Number of individual specimens. I don't know, Miles. Pines would be toward the top. Oaks, probably, as far as both number of species and number of specimens. But, as far as purely number of species, oak and pine would be the largest.
O'BRIEN: Oak and pine.
ROSENOW: But...
O'BRIEN: Can you give us, I know you don't want to take this, but do you have a personal favorite?
ROSENOW: Ask me again Friday, Miles. I love the diversity of Nebraska's, of America's trees. That's a tremendous, tremendous thing. And the Arbor Day Foundation really encourages people to plant the right tree in the right place, to carefully select from this magnificence of trees for the trees that you plant, but among all those trees we want people to pick the one we think will make the best symbol of America, to increase the awareness that we all have of the value of America's trees.
O'BRIEN: Alright. Well deflected there, Mr. Rosenow. John Rosenow with the Arbor Day Group and the site, once again, www.arborday.org. Cast your vote for the national tree. Thanks for being with us on CNN SUNDAY MORNING, John.
ROSENOW: Thank you, Miles.
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