North Stonington Notes

Stephan Main Homestead is looking a bit lighter these days. Thanks to a generous grant from the Wood Pawcatuck Wild and Scenic Rivers Stewardship Council we have been able to hire an arborist, Pete Lamont, and his crew from Southern 401 Tree Company, to remove large invasive trees from our property. We had 60' tall Tree-of-Heaven growing throughout the the Homestead property.

 

Lest you think the plant is a recent occurance (like the unfortunate decision by ConnDot to plant Autumn Olive), it is worth looking at the history behind it.

 

Our Founding Fathers were men of science and were always looking to expand their knowledge of the physical world. Most of them belonged to The American Philosophical Society, the oldest learned society in the United States, founded by Benjamin Franklin in the mid 1700's for the purpose of “promoting useful knowledge.” Many of them were amateur botanists, enthusiastic to find and classify new species of plants, and were only too happy to share their discoveries with gentlemen of means and science from other countries.

 

Tree-of-Heaven, like Forsythia - another ubiquitous foreigner in this area - is from China. It's seeds were given to one of the first westerners to be allowed there, Pierre Nicholas le Cheron d'Incarville, a French Jesuit and plant lover stationed in Beijing. The tree was beautiful and easy to grow, so the precious seeds were given by Incarville to the English Royal Society. From there they were given to American Philosophical Society member, William Hamilton, whose 18th century estate in Philadelphia was renowned for the beauty of its landscape.

 

Although Hamilton was in the habit of sharing his plant discoveries with his friends, Tree of Heaven would have found its way to our Homestead regardless. It is one of the most aggressive plants in our area, found from Boston to Washington DC, and able to grow virtually anywhere. It is the tree from "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn" which miraculously survives in cracks in the sidewalk.

 

If you want to learn how to identify this tree, we have a video about it on our YouTube Channel, where we show you the difference between Tree of Heaven and a similar native, Staghorn Sumac. The video is called "Is That a Weed?"    NSHS Newsletter April 2025