The attempt to kill the 500-year-old live oak in Alabama is similar to an incident in Austin, Texas, in which a powerful weedkiller was poured on the roots of the so-called Treaty Oak where Stephen F. Austin signed treaties with Indians in the 1800s.
Paul Stedman Cullen is serving a 9-year sentence for the attack in March 1989. He says that he is innocent and that the conviction will be overturned. ”The decline has been stopped,” said Jack Siebenthaler, executive director for the American Society of Consulting Arborists. ”The tree has about one quarter of its canopy where the roots were least impacted. The rest has a rather bad external appearance, but there is some foliage growing in those other three quadrants.
”The tree will continue to survive,” he said, but its long-term prognosis remains clouded.
