Ode to the Water Oak

I attended a conference yesterday concerning urban trees...and the subject of Water Oaks came up between myself and the guy sitting next to me.  Water Oaks are short lived, as far as oaks go...and they have problems that make them not necessarily great as street trees.  For example, they get massively large and then fall on the nearest house...some people find this upsetting. 

This person told me that in one neighborhood in his town, of 150 trees determined to need removal, 120 of them were Water Oaks.  I wanted to argue with this guy and convince him that Water Oaks still live to be about 80, which is a lot older than me.  And that they are majestic and have character and provide shade and therefore deserve to live despite their faults. 

I began looking at the Water Oaks in my own neighborhood today as I was running, and I noticed that a lot of them really do look terrible.  And I started to think, maybe this guy's right, they are fine in the back yard where they can fall and just take out a shed or above ground pool on the way down but they shouldn't be street trees. 

But then I went past the grand old Water Oak down the street from my house.  She is like a fat, warty old lady, with rolls of blubber melting down and onto the sidewalk.  Her limbs stretch all the way across the street and provide shade to the house on the other side.  She has a beautiful form and a spirit and she has watched a lot of changes on our little street in the last 70 or so years.  I realized that this is the sort of tree I could picture chaining myself to, if I didn't have job security to worry about.  I'm sure that whomever makes decisions such as these can find all sorts of justifications for removal:  the inside is rotten, that limb is at a bad angle, etc... but in the end I hope that the person who takes down a tree like that understands the enormity of what they do.