A botanical mystery revealed: Who gave this dead tree a new life?

One of the most popular trees in San Diego Botanic Garden is actually a dead eucalyptus that was turned into a sculpture years ago. Visitors often ask about it, but nobody had any answers…until now. And I’m sharing what I learned here.

The tree was probably planted around 1918 by Donald and Gertrude Ingersoll, who originally bought a parcel of land on this site, built a ranch house, and began replacing native foliage with tall, shady Australian eucalyptus trees.

In the 1940s, Ruth and Charles Larabee, a plant-loving midwestern couple in search of southwestern adventure, bought the property plus an adjoining one. They created a “rancho de las flores,” planting mostly water-efficient trees and shrubs from Mexico and South America.

In 1957, Ruth Larabee donated her land to the County of San Diego, stipulating that it be a preserve for plants and California quails. In 1970, Quail Botanic Gardens officially opened to the public.

In 1995, Quail Botanic Gardens became a nonprofit foundation, with Julian Duval, a plant and animal specialist from the Indianapolis Zoo, as its first executive director. He retired in 2019 after 24 years of dedicated service and a broader name change to San Diego Botanic Garden, but a longtime docent, who remembered the tree being sculpted while he was there, suggested I try contacting him to ask about it.

He turned out to be a willing and wonderful informant.

“The tree was a huge one, over 100 feet tall, with two trunks,” he said. “But all things are mortal, and when it died in 2018, we wanted to memorialize it in some way, maybe carve something out of it, since it’s a historic tree, one of the oldest planted trees in the Garden. It’s a eucalyptus cladocalyx–a sugar gum–and sugar gum wood is decay-resistant, so it would last a long time.”

Since there were plants from Madagascar in the area around the tree, he thought that the sculpture could look like a Madagascan Baobab tree.

Many docents pitched in to fund the project, and one couple, who lived near Lake Hodges, suggested a sculptor there, who had recently created a large-scale wooden piece known as the Hodgee Monster–his version of the Loch Ness-type monster said to reside in the depths of the local lake.

But first, a tree surgeon had to be called, to cut off more than half of the too-huge dead eucalyptus. Then sculptor Ewing Mitchell IV (aka “Mitch” or Ewing) was summoned. He never had a chance to see the tree’s full height, and because of the way its trunks stuck out, he couldn’t quite do what he wanted with it, but after over a month of heavy-duty work with a chainsaw, grinder, and sander, he managed to finish the piece, and attended its celebration in May 2018.

Last month, we managed to get the two gentlemen together with the tree they had given new life. It was the first time Ewing had seen the sculpture since then. “It looks better aged!” he said, happily. And it was the first time the two had seen each other since 2018.

Their reunion was great fun for them and for me and my photographer/husband. And when a docent drove all four of us downhill to the Garden entrance, she excitedly told everyone along the way: “This is the man who did the dead tree sculpture!” Then others ran over to say how thrilled they were to meet him and how much they loved his work.

What a joy to unravel a mystery–thanks to Julian, Ewing, and the sugar gum tree!