‘The Marshal’ – Southern Catalpa

You won’t find too many “cigar trees” in Richmond, and you will find no other like this one. Its base sits like a massive 6-foot-wide boulder at the edge of a field behind the John Marshall High School playing fields and near the office of the Richmond Urban Forestry Department. The boulder is easily climbed, and if you take your turn you can be certain you are following the scrambling of countless other humans. It’s fun to imagine the human interactions this tree has had. If your imaginative ears are open, it will tell you stories of the many football, baseball and soccer games it has watched.