What is a Grand Tree?

What is a Grand Tree?

Here is a Grand Tree. 

It is Angel Oak on Johns Island.   Angel oak is a live oak and estimated to be 400 to 500 years old.   It is 107 inches in diameter.  

What is diameter?   Stand in front of a tree and look at the trunk.    How wide is it?   Angel oak is about 9 feet wide.   Angel oak is certainly a grand tree and a historic tree.    Even if it is only 400 years old, it would have been an acorn in 1613.    By the time the first English settlers arrived in Charleston Towne Landing, it would have been 57 years old.

Here is a tree on James Island.   It is just off Folly Road, near Highland Avenue.   It is a live oak and has a 53 inch diameter.    It is about half of the size of Angel Oak, but it is quite grand.

Here is a grand tree near Town Hall.

It is right off Dills Bluff next to First Baptist Church.   It is a live oak and 57 inches in diameter.

Since 2007, the Town of James Island has defined “grand tree” to be all oak species with a diameter 24 inches or greater.   Here is a grand tree according to the Town’s current regulation. 

It is a Laurel Oak that is only slightly more than 24 inches in diameter.   It is located at James Island Charter High School.  (This is actually in City of Charleston jurisdiction, so the Town ordinances don’t apply.)   Here is a photo of the trunk.

Stand in front of an oak tree.   Is the trunk 2 feet or wider at “breast height?”   If it is, then it is illegal to cut it down or damage it without a permit.      Excessive pruning counts as damage.   No more than 3 six inch or greater limbs can be removed without a permit.   And no more than 25% of the tree’s canopy can be removed.     

Failure to get a permit results in heavy fines.   The fines are based upon the size of the tree.   You pay the costs of planting replacement trees with total inches equal to three times the inches of the tree illegally removed or pruned.    For example, removing a 36 inch tree requires replacement of 108 inches, which would be 54 2 inch trees.    The cost would be at least $8,100.

A permit costs $25, but it is necessary to appear before the Town’s Board of Zoning Appeals.    The majority of the members of the Board must vote to allow the tree to be cut down or heavily pruned.    It is treated as a variance and the homeowner must prove that keeping the tree is a hardship.      If the Board decides to let you remove your tree from your yard, then you must mitigate inch for inch.    A 36 inch tree would require 18 two inch trees, which would cost about $2,700.    However, the Board could require you to replace it with 4 or 6 inch trees.   While the number of trees would be only 8 or 6, planting large trees can be expensive.   It could cost as much as $15,000.

A member of the Town’s Planning Commission, Garret Milliken, proposed that the Town change its tree ordinance to cover all trees other than pines 18 inches in diameter or greater.   Apparently, only one other Commissioner supported this proposal and so it wasn’t included in the recommended changes sent to Town Council on June 20^th.   However, a majority of Town Council voted to amend the recommendation from the Planning Commission to include the Milliken rule.    It was further amended at the Town Council meeting to exclude sweet gums and Chinese tallow trees.

It just so happens that we have a live oak in our front yard that has a diameter of almost exactly 18 inches.    We are very fond of the tree and have no interest in cutting it down, but is it really grand?  

No one would confuse this tree with the Angel Oak.  And how “historic” is it?    

We bought it at Hyams here on James Island.    It was planted on Mother's day 17 years ago.    Kathy looks a bit younger, and Will was just finishing up first grade.   He is older now.  He graduated from The Citadel in 2011 and has just been promoted to First Lieutenant while serving in Afghanistan.  This tree is special to us and we have no desire to cut it down.  Here is another photo of the youth of what might soon be a “grand tree.”   

It was seven years later.  Will was in middle school.   Notice that the tree was now taller than the house.   Live oak trees can grow fast.    Too bad Will was leaning against it, otherwise, we could have a better idea of the diameter—the width of the trunk.

We have many trees in our yard, but we didn’t plant all of them.    The previous owner planted two river birches.  Under current regulations, they are not defined as grand trees, but if the ordinance is changed to all trees other than pines, sweet gums and Chinese tallow trees, then they will become "grand."  While the river birch is native to the Southeastern U.S., they live on fresh water river banks, and our waterways are too salty.   However, landscapers find the striking bark and drooping foliage attractive.   These attributes are most noticeable when the tree is young, which is the focus of many landscape architects.    In my neighborhood, there are a good many quite large river birches that were much smaller when they were planted years ago in our front yards. 

This river birch is already 24 inches in diameter.   It tends to drop a lot of one inch branches, but the real problem is that it shades the live oak.   The oak is starting to grow taller, but it won’t grow into the center of the yard and instead is growing onto the roof of our house. 

Is our preference for the live oak tree a hardship?   Should Kathy and I have to convince the Board of Zoning Appeals that we should be allowed to remove one tree in our yard to allow another to thrive?    Should we have to get permission from the BZA to prune the oak tree’s branches to keep them off the roof?  How much money should we have to pay in mitigation?

The second river birch is almost 18 inches in diameter.    It too might suddenly become “grand.”  The problem is that it shades the pecan tree.    The pecan tree is much smaller, and at this rate, it will never be “grand” by any standard!

We have another “soon to be” grand tree in our yard.   This is a Canary Island Date Palm.

This tree is already 24 inches in diameter.   The Canary Island date palm is not native to South Carolina or the Western Hemisphere.  

Where did this one come from?   Kathy pulled it out of the trash pile at Cross Seed.  It had break in the top that was so bad we were sure it would die.   It is now 17 years later.   The fronds are a bit spikey, but we have grown attached to it.    Yet suppose we wanted to plant something else?   Is this a grand, historic tree?    Should it require a variance from the BZA?   How much extra money should we have to pay?

Why is our yard covered with trees?   It is because we have planted new trees and nurtured the ones already here.    What was it like before?

Is it just our yard?    Let’s look at the Town of James Island on Google Earth.

And now look at the portion of James Island that makes up the Town back in 1939.

That was 74 years ago.   But the neighborhoods that make up the Town of James Island were developed in the fifties and sixties, ten to fifteen years after this aerial photo.   Why are those formerly cleared fields now covered with trees?    It is because the more than 4,000 homeowners of the Town of James Island chose to plant and nurture trees.   They take some down, but they plant new ones.   We have a beautiful canopy of trees, spontaneously evolving with the free choices of the people of James Island.    

In my opinion, that is the way it should be.   I don’t believe that the Town should impose new regulations, fees and fines on our homeowners to try to micromanage the landscaping decisions they make for their own yards.