[By Marcia Milner-Brage, in Cedar Falls, Iowa, USA]
Everyone who lives in Cedar Falls knows the four-legged tree. If it’s not in Ripley’s Believe It Or Not, it should be. It’s more peculiar than beautiful. It’s on the corner of 18th and Tremont.
Everyone who lives in Cedar Falls knows the four-legged tree. If it’s not in Ripley’s Believe It Or Not, it should be. It’s more peculiar than beautiful. It’s on the corner of 18th and Tremont.
I’m not prone to drawing landmarks, but this unique tree demanded an exception. It's been on my to-draw list for years, I just hadn’t found the right sightline until now. Spotting the red, puffy flowers of the smoke tree peeking out from under the leafy green canopy was the aha moment that propelled me, with sketchbook and wax pastels, to set up my easel and start in.
 |
| Four-legged tree before the July 2009 storm |
One hundred years ago (1915), John Henning planted 4 linden tree saplings—2 on either side of the walk—leading up to his front door. Mr. Henning, a farmer who had immigrated from Germany as a young man, had moved into town when he retired. With lots of expereince grafting apple trees, he aimed to imitate the archways of lindens he recalled from Berlin. First, the two on the same side of the walk were lashed together and grafted. Then when each pair was tall enough to arch over the walk, he grafted the pairs. Over time, a towering trunk grew from the original four.
The four-legged tree of Cedar Falls has weathered two major setbacks in its long life. Not too many years after Mr. Henning started his project, the front right tree died and a replacement was grafted in. Thus the lesser girth of that trunk.
Then in the middle of the night on July 10, 2009, a fierce microburst windstorm snapped off much of the main trunk above the four legs, toppling it onto the house. (Many other, old and grand trees were shattered or up-rooted that night.) The next day, every newspaper and TV news station in the State of Iowa reported the grievous damage to this historic tree. The current owner initially thought to cut all of it down, but defaulted to cutting off the unstable remaining main trunk with everything leafy and green above where the four legs combined.
Everyone wondered: would it survive? Looking even stranger than before, it has!!
