If you don’t look hard enough- chances are you will miss the brand new Christmas tree at Carl Sohncke Square Park located at the intersection of Woodside and Roosevelt Avenues at 58th Street in Woodside.
Once you have homed into the tree, you will notice, the baby tree is barely three and half feet tall and glimmers shyly; glittering in this year’s Christmas decorations. It’s little bare and all twigs and baby leaves, and despite its diminutive size is a Christmas tree. A tiny tree with a formidable task ahead of it – to survive Sohncke Square.
Sohncke Square, named after Carl Sohncke, a Woodside resident who was killed in World War I, has been home to several Christmas Trees in the past.
None of them, unfortunately, have lived to tell the tale of existing in a bustling commercial hub, right underneath a clanking 7 train.
Since the mid-90s, the Parks Department has planted several trees – but each one has perished mysteriously.
“For many decades, there was a tree,” remembers Barbra J. Coleman, Vice President of the Woodside Civic Association and a long time Woodside resident, “but it died mysteriously in the mid ’90s. An evergreen tree was planted without any success,” she adds.
Baffled by the death of the tree, residents were slightly mollified when a study done in 1996 by Cornell School of Agriculture revealed there was a lack of potassium in the soil.
Maybe that was what killed the tree, they thought. Potassium was added, a new tree planted. The new tree soon died.
The New York Parks Department conducted another study and said perhaps the trees weren’t being planted far enough into the soil. Sure thing! Let’s plant another tree, said the residents. No luck still – this new tree perished too.
After several years and many dead trees, residents continue to wonder what causes these trees to never survive. The Parks Department speculated it might be the fact that the square doesn’t have enough sunlight or perhaps it was the pollution from the overhead 7 train that was causing these pines to die.
In 2001, the Parks Department planted another scrub pine with a special underground irrigation system, but the results were the same.
“Each year they plant a new tree in that little area” said Woodside resident Witold Rak referring to Sohncke Square.”But the tree doesn’t have space to put down its roots – it’s like a bathtub,” he said of the shallow ground in which the trees are placed. “So when the tree grows and expands, it can’t grow anymore because the roots have no place to go,” he said, offering his explanation on why the trees have a tough time weathering the square.
In 2008, a Serbian Spruce Tree was planted in the square. “We thought this spruce would survive,” said Ms. Coleman. “But then, one day, we saw the tree – it was dead. Just like that. Overnight, dead,” she said.
In August 2009, the Parks Department conducted an investigation to check if there was concrete underneath the soil that was preventing the tree from growing. Their results were inconclusive. And then came the current baby tree. “It is called Taxus Cuspidata ‘Capitata’,” said Patricia Bertuccio of the New York Parks Department, referring to the scientific name of the tree which is also called Japanese Yew. “The tree is currently 3.5 feet tall and is expected to grow about 20 feet and about 10 feet wide, with branches,” she said.
While the baby tree faces the daunting task of surviving in a square where several of its brethren have perished, it also has to live up to the high expectations of the residents, who are disappointed by the tiny tree. “It’s miserable,” said Tina, a Woodside resident, as she rushed to attend evening prayers at St.Sebastian’s church across the square.
“Wait, there is a tree outside?” asked another worshipper inside the church, obviously missing the little Yew in the square.
Witold Rak thinks the Yew should have been planted after Christmas. “They [Parks Department] don’t have to put in a Rockefeller Center size tree,” he said. “You can get a regular size tree and put it up,” said Rak, adding the authorities could plant a real tree after Christmas, so it has a whole year to grow.
Whether this baby tree survives to see another Christmas is anyone’s guess. But for residents like Barbra Coleman, the tree is a symbol of hope and Christmas joy.
“I said to the manager at McDonalds [across the square] “Laurie, what are we gonna do? It’s such a small tree,” recalls Coleman at her disappointment on seeing the little tree. “But its new life, said Laurie! And that’s when bells went off in my head! New life and a baby tree…isn’t that what Christmas is all about?” laughed Coleman. “The tree really represents Christmas,” she chortled, eyes twinkling. “New life, baby tree, baby Jesus, I love it!”
This piece originally appeared in The Queens Chronicle
