We love our trees!
Tulane University is recognizable by its mature live oak, crape myrtle and bald cypress trees that dot the uptown campus. Those species and others all 1,065 of them are treated with care and regularly surveyed to monitor growth and damage that may be incurred by tropical weather.
Mihnea Dobre, a Tulane staff architect, says the trees are monitored for three reasons: for educational purposes, to monitor maintenance needs and in keeping with the Tulane Tree Policy (yes, we love our trees enough to have a policy and procedure plan).
“Trees add a lot of value to the campus community by reducing the carbon footprint, aesthetically and through heat island reduction,” said Dobre. “If anything happens to impact that value such as flooding, removal or illness, we would want to have it documented and replaced.”
The heat island effect is a term that accounts for the warmer temperatures in areas that are more heavily populated than their rural counterparts.
Did you know there are 263 live oaks, 220 crape myrtles and 111 bald cypress trees on the uptown campus?
For the university"s dedication to protecting its tree population, Tulane was recognized as a Tree Campus USA by the Arbor Day Foundation.
Going forward, as you lean against a cypress to study or lay out a blanket to catch shade from a live oak, know that it isn"t a random tree buried within a forest.
It has been counted. It has been cared for. It is loved.
Here are a few facts about campus trees at Tulane:
- The Newcomb Oaks lining the Newcomb Quad were planted from acorns taken from the original Newcomb campus about 100 years ago.
- The ginkgo biloba tree in front of the Richardson Memorial building may be the oldest specimen of that species in New Orleans.
- The metasequoia tree in front of the School of Architecture can be traced back to seeds collected in China.
