Fig Tree Turns Heads
It's 100-feet high, 111 years old
By
Judd Cribbs
Story Created:
Jul 24, 2007 at 5:17 PM EST
Story Updated:
Jul 24, 2007 at 5:20 PM EST
It was planted in 1896, the same year Utah became the 45th state, and now this Mysore fig tree is still thriving.
"It stops traffic," says homeowner Earl Brooks, over whose property the tree looms. "Almost every day people stop by. There's somebody here just about all the time."
Earl says his wife Audrey picks up the dropping figs on a weekly basis. "Oh, she picks up a couple thousand pounds a year I guess," he says, "She picks them up and puts them in bags out there for the garbage man. Sometimes she has 15 or 20 bags."
Earl is nearly 91 and says he and Audrey moved into their home in 1975. "It was big then," he says of the tree, "It was the biggest thing we'd ever seen."
In 1999, the State Division of Forestry designated it as a "state champion" tree with the (then) dimensions of 100' high, 104' spread at 32' circumference.
Earl once even made preserves out of all the figs falling from the sky. "I didn't like it myself," he says. And in all these years, he's never been hit on the head by a falling fig. "But I have with a mango," he adds.
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