Unfortunately this tree no longer exists. Unlike the many stories of great trees, this one is of the lowly, scrubby box elder.
When I was growing up on the family farm in Plainfield, there grew an unusually large box elder right outside my bedroom window. This tree was a prodigious size for a box elder. It stood 45 or 50 feet and had an unusual curve in its trunk. About 25 feet off the ground, an octopus-looking mass of several branches spread in all directions for tens of feet.
In 1974, a tornado tore half of the tree's crown off. Undaunted, it simply regenerated itself. Over the years, kittens were born in that big mass of branches and a wood duck once hatched her brood there. In 1990 the great Plainfield tornado did it in, and the life of a strange, familiar, and important tree came to an end.
