Tree expert Olaf Ribeiro’s Arbor Day tours of Winslow’s historic trees was fully booked, even with two added walks. If you missed the tour, you can still read the story (below) I wrote last week. For Larry Steagal’s photo gallery of Ribeiro in action, check out this link.

A change comes over Olaf Ribeiro when he touches the gnarled and scabbed bark of an old apple tree gripping a small patch of lawn on Winslow Way.

Suddenly he no longer sees the clinic and the busy sidewalk crowding the tree’s roots. The supermarket across the street and its vast parking lot disappear. In his mind’s eye, acres worth of Winslow streets, shops and restaurants give way to rows of apple trees much like the one at his side.

“All of downtown was an orchard,” he said, squinting at a view in the distant past. “Twenty acres. All that you can see here was apple trees. Why this one has survived is beyond me.”

Having an accommodating inheritor – the Winslow Virginia Mason clinic – is one key to the tree’s longevity. The other is Ribeiro, who has combined the passion of an activist with the know-how of a scientist to save some of Winslow’s oldest and most revered trees.

A plant pathologist for over 30 years, the Kenyan-born Ribeiro uses Bainbridge as his home base between globe-spanning, tree-saving adventures that have been profiled in the Wall Street Journal and NBC’s Today show. He’s advised arborists treating the Doomsday Tree, under which England’s Magna Carta was signed, and provides ongoing care for Britain’s Tortworth Chestnut, a tree said to have sprouted over 1,200 years ago.

“How long a tree lives depends on how you treat it,” he said.

Ribeiro gives his most dedicated attention – often free-of-charge – to the island trees he holds most dear.

The three towering trees outside the Bainbridge Historical Museum have been under the Ribeiro’s care for decades. He agitated at City Hall enough to save the former pet store property from redevelopment and worked to free the trees’ compacted roots from the store’s parking lot. Now the trees – an elm, a sycamore and an 88-foot-tall red oak – live on as reminders of a unique past.

“These trees were brought across the ocean from Britain,” Ribeiro said. “They’re the last of their size remaining in downtown.”
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