A hike through the history of campus trees

This is called our CNRE Hokie Hike series. And our first one today, we're kicking off here on campus. Jamie King, our university arborist, is going to talk about all of the trees we have on campus. We have over 11,000 and so we're just going to take a meandering tour around campus and talk about our beautiful foliage. I usually like to start tree tours here on campus at some of the oldest trees on campus because they connect us to the past. So we started at the Merry Tree sculpture called, Think on These Things at the Duck Pond. Then we saw some of the old growth trees at the President's house, The Grove, which connects us to other old growth trees on campus. Like those in the old growth forest. "These white oak, including those in the old growth forest by Lane stadium are about 350 years old." We went to one of the older quads on campus Ag quad where we talked about trees aging out and how we're replacing them. Then we went to the Alwood oak that's on the Drillfield. to talk about Virginia Tech's first urban forest or William Bradford Alwood. Then we stopped at a place where we planted a lot of new trees last year, the Sesquicentennial Grove. Then we finished everything at a legacy tree we planted at the Duck Pond in 2022. In natural resources what we do is out here all the time. Our students live outdoors. They work outdoors. They do their classes outdoors. We're in that all the time, but everybody isn't. And this is a great time to bring our community with us, to say, here's what we see now, here's what we're so passionate about. And maybe you can be passionate about it too.