MU sets out to blaze trails on campus

Tree-Trail Guide to boost visitor interest in campus flora

by Jon Stemmle

n addition to the charms of classic architecture and stimulating artwork, visitors to the MU campus, aided with a guidebook to trails that meander about campus, will soon be able to thoroughly enjoy MU's stately trees.

MU's trees were first featured in 1989 in a tree trail guide for the university's sesquicentennial. That guide provided Tom Flood, superintendent of Campus Facilities' landscape services, with the inspiration for an updated, permanent version.

A group of visitors makes its way through McAllister Park, part of the Tree-Trail Guide's Jesse Hall Loop.

"The primary reason for the guide is to let the public know of the horticultural and educational resources we have on this campus,'' said Flood. "We have a wealth of opportunities to learn about plants and about America's favorite outdoor past-time — gardening."

$4 million tour

With more than 5,000 trees on the campus' 296 acres of developed landscape, there were plenty of ways to create a trail. The final product breaks up the campus into three self-guiding loop trails: Jesse Hall Loop, Lowry Mall Loop, and Memorial Union Loop.

"We felt that the 1989 trail featuring 150 trees was too long to do at one time,'' Flood said. "This time we wanted to have shorter loops that people could do with just small bits of time."

Landscape services personnel scoured the campus seeking out a variety of flora and interesting trees for the guide. Once the trees were plotted on a campus map and individual selections made, three routes were pain-stakingly designed.

"We wanted loops around the center of campus where it would be accessible to all of our visitors as well as students, faculty and staff,'' Flood explained. "Within these areas we sought a variety of interesting trees that would also take people through the historic, unique and popular areas of campus.''

Each tree is identified by a plaque on which the tree's common and botanical names appear, and its area of origin. A further description of each tree — with interesting horticultural and historical details — appears in the Tree-Trail Guide, along with maps of each loop.

Given that the landscape trees on campus have an appraised value of $4,883,000 — about $960 per tree — visitors can experience a multimillion-dollar tour for free.

Free preview of the tour

The Tree-Trail Guide will be out later this summer, but it's not too early to take a sneak peak of some of the highlights of the tour.

The Jesse Hall Loop, located in the area around Francis Quadrangle, takes visitors .9 miles to 48 trees. This tour takes approximately one hour and covers trees such as the Dawn Redwood, believed to be extinct until 1941 when it was found in the Szechwan Province of China.

The Lowry Mall Loop, a half-hour, .6-mile tour, brings visitors face-to-face with the charms of 28 trees. A specimen of the Weeping White Pine, known for branches that "weep" to the ground, is located near Brady Commons. This tree's branches "weep" into the shape of an elephant.

Lastly, the Memorial Union Loop, a .6-mile course with a walking-time of 35 minutes, has 37 trees. A feature of this loop is a tropical Rubber Tree which, during World War II, was extensively planted in orchards by the government to ensure a domestic supply of rubber.

For those wishing to learn about and, via beautiful strolls about campus, experience the grace and charm of MU's trees, the three tree-trail loops make a perfect summer trek.