Homegrown: Red Oak at Brucemore

Deb Engmark, head gardener at Brucemore, shared the following about a red oak tree on the grounds of the historic estate in Cedar Rapids:

“Of all available planting material, none is more useful than trees. They have size gracefulness, strength, dignity, age.” – Ossian Cole Simonds, Landscape Gardening (1920)

 As a young adult, the tree stood the year that Abraham Lincoln asked for volunteers to assist in the effort to squelch the southern uprising, an event later named the American Civil War. It stood as witness to the construction of what would become Brucemore, the grandest house west of the Mississippi, shading the home's barn and chicken coop for 25 years, standing just a couple of inches north of the southern boundary of Caroline Sinclair's property line. 

This middle-aged red oak specimen witnessed the changing of the Brucemore landscape once the Douglas family became the owners-the transformation of the prairie into a sculpted lawn and garden to the north and the reshaping of the woody area to the south. In the early 1910's, a gravel road was installed per the landscape design by Ossian Cole

Simonds. The road curved around the perimeter of the trees drip line in an effort to reach the house. And again in 1928 when Roy West, Simonds business partner, redesigned the estate's entrance, the wider curving drive veered to the left in an effort to miss the tree, and then softly corrected itself to continue the journey to the house. 

 Quercus rubra, or red oak, is a 60 to 70 foot tall, quickly growing oak, very comparable in its transplant ability to the pin oak because of its shallow and almost non existent taproot.  A deciduous tree, the Red Oak prefers a sunny spot with sandy loam soils that are well drained and a bit on the acidic side. Its ability to withstand polluted air makes it a good tree for urban areas. Please check with your city forestry department before planting on a parkway because it is not on the Cedar Rapids street tree recommendation list.