Celebrating Trees at Bristol Friends Meeting
As you drive by Bristol Meeting on Market Street in historic Bristol Borough, you can’t help but notice the huge sycamore tree adjacent to the meetinghouse. Fondly known as the Penn sycamore, the tree has been there almost as long as the meetinghouse, and on April 6th, Bristol Friends decided it was time to give it a birthday party!
They were joined by local tree lovers including Silver Lake Nature Center, Bristol Borough High School’s Crochet Club and Interact Club, The Bristol Garden Club, Heritage Conservancy, Fallsington Meeting Singers, Friends of Burlington Island and Arborist Richard Mowry, Lynne Cherry, Bill Pezza, Maggie Weber, Commissioner Bob Harvey, and the awesome Bristol community.
Bristol Clerk, Alisa Myles
“Today we are celebrating our Penn sycamore which is another ring older. We don’t know exactly how old the Penn sycamore is, but we do know that it’s probably over 300 years old,” said Bristol clerk Alisa Myles. “As Quakers, we celebrate stewardship by taking care of things like trees and the planet…and we want to take care of all trees,” she added.
She went on to explain that this celebration is also is an educational event, and that all attendees will get an Eastern White Pine tree, also known as the Tree of Peace, because of the configuration of its five needles that appear to spread out like an open hand.
Local school children were invited to draw and give birthday cards to the tree, and many people wrote birthday wishes on pieces of cloth that were then strung around the tree. There was a tree-shaped birthday cake, and everyone sang Happy Birthday. They even encircled the tree and gave it a big hug to show how much it is loved and appreciated by the community.
The Penn sycamore, which has a circumference of 18 feet, was recently registered as a Champion Tree of Pennsylvania, a program that records the largest trees of each species submitted by Pennsylvania citizens and verified by foresters and volunteers. The PA Champion Tree Program is part of the Pennsylvania Forestry Association, the nation’s oldest grass roots state organization devoted to forest conservation. Bristol’s tree is listed as the #6 largest sycamore in Bucks County and the #72 largest sycamore in Pennsylvania.
The tree has grown so much over the last 100 years that a commemorative plaque that was mounted on it sometime around 1932 is now out of the reach of most people.
Bristol Meeting labyrinth
Bristol Friends will continue to celebrate their property and community in May, when they will celebrate World Labyrinth Day on May 4th with a event in honor of their newly installed labyrinth which is adjacent to the Penn sycamore. If you missed the tree celebration in April, make sure you don’t miss World Labyrinth Day in May!
Photographs courtesy of Alisa Myles and Mercy Ingraham