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Venerable tree doomed Photo by Jim Craven A campaign to honor this gingko tree at the Ashland library may not be enough to save the 88-year-old tree from the saw, when the library building is expanded. Arborist Pete Seda says the tree should be moved. Likely winner of Ashland tree poll stands in path of library expansion By MARK FREEMAN ASHLAND -- The 55-foot gingko tree outside the city's public library is not particularly tall, old or big for its species. The summer foliage is plenty attractive, yet it yields a fruit that smells more like the land mines in Ashland's dog park than the aesthetic offerings of April. But this 88-year-old gingko is clearly the sentimental stem of choice in Ashland's annual exercise of honoring one of its more artistic arbors. The gingko is a leaves-down favorite to win Tree of the Year honors in Ashland this week. Odds are just as good that the tree will be gone soon in the name of civic progress. Planned expansion of the public library likely will gobble up the ground where the gingko was planted in 1912. City officials say it appears too expensive to build the new library around the tree, or move the gingko to a spot not so over-booked. "From what I've seen at this point, it looks pretty clear that the gingko will win," says Robbin Pearce, the keeper of the city's official tree ballots. "It's gotten way more votes than we normally get. "But it won't save the tree," she says. "Unless there's a redesign of the building, I'm pretty convinced it's going to come down." Tuesday's announcement of Tree of the Year honors, a highlight of Ashland's Arbor Week festivities, will be like a deciduous version of Lou Gehrig Day at Yankee Stadium -- one last hurrah for a fan favorite. `Instead of hanging the ribbon around it, you take a chainsaw to it," says Colin Swales, an Ashland activist who wants the tree saved. "It's a big deal in Ashland. You know how Ashlanders are." Since 1989, Ashland residents have helped honor Arbor Week by voting one particular tree in town as Tree of the Year. The Ashland Tree Commission takes nominees each year and comes up with three to five finalists that are listed on a ballot that is printed in a newspaper and mailed to residents in their power bills. Ballots were collected through Sunday at City Hall. Mayor Cathy Shaw will reveal the winner at Tuesday's council meeting. The winning tree usually gets a plaque. The gingko become this year's populist choice over the other finalists -- the cedars at Safeway, some Granite Street redwoods and a mimosa on North Main Street. It's draw is part foliage, part fate. Gingkoes are rare Asian trees dating back more than 200 million years and once considered extinct. This particular gingko is 55 feet high and female, which Ashland arborist Pete Seda says makes it even more rare. And being female, its spring fruit gives off a dung-like aroma when squashed by sneakers and tracked into the library. At 88 years old, the gingko is barely drinking age for the long-living species. But it's aged enough to have earned a place in Ashland history, as well as a spot in the city's future. But voters passed a bond measure last year to expand the library branch, and expansion would overrun the tree's spot, says Pearce, who once strongly supported designing the new building around the tree. Some residents, like Jim Lewis from the city's Historical Commission, don't like the library expansion project and would prefer Ashland take Medford's lead and plan a new library at a different location. The campaign that will sweep the gingko into Tree of the Year honors has come to encapsule that idea, Lewis says. "It's just one more reason," he says, "not to like the project." To successfully uproot and move the tree and its 150-ton root ball would likely cost $20,000-$30,000, says arborist Seda. "You got to realize," he says, "a lot of people pay far more money than this to move a tree." But Pearce, of the city's Conservation Department, says Ashland needs to weigh what that money could do for other tree projects in Ashland. "I realistically don't see (relocation) happening," she says. A more likely scenario, Pearce says, is to cut down the gingko, mill some of the wood and "commemorate the tree by incorporating it into the library itself." The city could then plant a new gingko on the grounds of the new library and commemorate the old one with the Tree of the Year plaque in hopes that the gingko stink would literally, and figuratively, go away. "It would be a male tree," Pearce says, "not a female tree." Today's Edition : News | Sports | Business | Weather | Tempo | Classifieds Mail Tribune Copyright � The Mail Tribune 2000, Medford, Oregon USA