Found a 200 year old oak datestamp during a pruning job yesterday

I was trimming off a dead limb on a big white oak out in Chester County and noticed a rusty metal tag nailed into the trunk. Pulled out my phone and read it: "Planted 1824." I had no idea people used to mark trees like that back then. Is that something you all come across in old growth areas?

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anna_craig1mo ago

Hang on, I gotta push back a little here. That tag was ALMOST certainly put there long after the tree was planted, probably by a historical society or a landowner in the 1900s who wanted to mark it. Nailing a metal tag into a 200 year old tree would have damaged the bark and left a scar, and it being that clean and readable after two centuries is just not realistic. I've worked with a lot of old oaks and the ones from the 1820s would have the tag completely grown over or rusted away by now. You're probably looking at a cool piece of local history, just not one that's as old as the tree itself.

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stellablack1mo ago

Wait, did you ever hear what happened to my buddy Mark a few years back? He found this old rusted plaque on a massive walnut tree on his property, thought it was from like the 1700s or something wild like that. He got all excited, posted it online, and some local historian guy actually came out to look at it. Turns out it was a marker from a 1960s Boy Scout project that had just been poorly hammered in and left to weather. The tree was maybe 80 years old, not 300. The nail they used had barely even sunk into the bark because the tree had just grown around it a bit. So yeah, I'm with you on this one. People love to romanticize old tags but the reality is usually way more boring.

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