Stowe village loses iconic maple tree

It took about four days to remove the tree, Rocha said.

The tree has received a few olive branches over the years to keep it in good standing. In 2014, the Talarico family, which owns the property, said they’d spent around $10,000 to stabilize the tree. But this time, it couldn’t be saved.

In 2014, about a third of the tree fell onto Park Street during a storm. Fortunately, no one was hurt and it didn’t damage any cars or nearby buildings, but it was a wakeup call for the Talaricos.

Several weeks ago, a few more of the majestic maple’s limbs fell to the street.

Rocha estimated the tree is between 75 and 100 years old. Its trunk was about 4 feet in diameter, and it stood about 70 feet tall.

After getting a look inside the tree, Rocha confirmed it was time to cut it down, as some of the branches were hollow and “maple rots pretty quickly.”

“This is what happens. They get big and fall apart,” he said. “There’s nothing you can do for it anymore.”

One of the cables holding it up snapped last month, increasing the liability on the property owners.

“Everyone’s sad to see it go,” Rocha said.

Stowe Town Manager Charles Safford routinely takes walks around the village, and has admired the massive maple.

“It comes to everyone’s mind. You don’t have to bring it up twice. Everyone knows the tree you’re talking about,” he said. “Obviously it was a beautiful tree that contributed greatly to the streetscape, but I know it was having challenges in recent years,” but it’s still sad to see it go.

“It was a spectacularly beautiful tree. ... Its natural beauty was surreal. Some days, you’d sit there and look at the big limbs going in every direction. It takes a little while to get to that state of majesty. That’s not a one-year-old tree doing that,” Safford said.

Charlie Lusk, Stowe’s tree warden, said at one point he thought the tree was a contender for tallest silver maple in the state, but he no longer believes that was the case. As majestic as it is, Lusk understands the Talaricos’ decision.

“It’s a privately owned tree on private property, and a very large chunk fell out of it a few years ago. Silver maples don’t have particularly long lifespans by the standards of deciduous trees. It’s not a particularly sturdy wood” and it represented a liability, Lusk said.

“It’s always sorry to have a big tree go. Eventually, landscape trees come to the end of their useful life. I can’t condemn the property owner for wanting to be rid of the perfectly reasonable worry that a big section of it is going to come down and do danger to life, limb and property,” he said.

Mike Snyder, the Vermont Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation’s commissioner and a Stowe resident, has evaluated that tree in the past, and says he was shocked to hear it was coming down.

“It’s had some loving care. I hadn’t heard, and then suddenly, it’s gone. It was a little bit surprising, and it’s too bad. It takes a long time to make a tree like that,” said Snyder, who received text messages from a few people about the tree.

It was a “classic example of a silver maple, doing what they can do, if they’re given the chance,” Snyder said.