This One-of-a-Kind Tree Is in Trouble. Can It Be Saved?

Rick Wise let his imagination wander for a bit, thinking about an oak tree that's about 50 years older than our country.

"If that tree could talk," said Wise, an Army veteran, military historian and executive director with the South Carolina Battleground Preservation Trust, "the stories it would tell ..."

Situated near a two-story brick house that was a focal point in a Revolutionary War battle, the tree at Eutaw Springs Battlefield in South Carolina has borne witness to history. It was there during the Sept. 8, 1781, fight that was one of the war's final battles in the Palmetto State, a battle that set the stage for British Gen. Charles Cornwallis' eventual surrender at Yorktown, Virginia, later that year. Despite claiming a tactical victory, the British suffered heavy losses from the American forces led by Gen. Nathanael Greene and were effectively driven from the interior of the Carolinas.

But age, the elements and a lightning strike 50 years ago have taken their toll on what's now called the Witness Tree. In an ill-advised, if well-intentioned, long-ago effort to save the tree after the lightning strike, iron chains and steel support cables were wrapped around its trunk. But the tree kept growing, eventually swallowing the metal into its vascular system and, said arborist Aron Landsaw of SavATree, choking off its ability to fully absorb vital nutrients.