ABSTRACT
On May 20, 2015, the author attended a funeral for a madrone tree that unexpectedly fell on a windless day a few months earlier in North Portland. The fallen tree represented their rooted history, the transformation of the neighborhood and the city, and the ways a community can value a plant and the history it has witnessed. Urban foresters at Portland Parks and Recreation administer the program, alongside a volunteer Heritage Tree Committee that judges applications and puts a list of proposed Heritage Trees before the Portland City Council. The celebrated "heritage" of cities can take many forms, often highlighting the history of certain groups of residents over others. As students chose trees to research, they were enthusiastic about unearthing a broader range of Portland's history and heritage, whether their research spoke to Native American history, women's history, labor history, or the history of trees in less wealthy sections of the city.
