Tree gurus say Porterville boasts tallest oak

Valley Oak tree savvy, Sandy Newman sized up some Porterville timber Friday and discovered what she determined to be the tallest oak in the county.

The 200-year-old, 114-foot giant is rooted in a backyard at 377 N. Kessing St. It is one of 500 trees Newman has measured.

“It’s gotten to the point where people have started calling,” she said.

People like Gene Mabry, who called about the oak tree standing in the corner of his son’s backyard. It is 17 feet wide, healthy, and destructive.

About three months ago one of the tree’s main limbs fell onto the patio cover, crumbled portions of a brick fence, and moved a telephone pole a few inches.

Its heavy branches hover just above a sidewalk along Morton Avenue and loom over a patio cover that it recently snapped in half.

It has been baleful before, but it has also been fertile.

The branch was about 40 feet long, and it took a few people about a full week to clean up the mess, according to Mabry.

“It’s a lot of work to maintain,” he said. “I love this tree, but I wish we had more acreage for people to come out and look at it.”

Alan George, farm adviser emeritus for the University of California, accompanied Newman. George usually scopes out Visalia’s oaks, and never ventures to Porterville with a measuring tape.

“Visalia is the heart of the oak forest,” he said.

He and Newman were lured to the Kessing residence when Mabry said he might have a tree wider than the 25-foot trunk they recently found on the outskirts of Visalia.

“I’m just amazed,” George said. “I don’t know why I’ve never noticed these trees.”

“This tree is in good shape,” Newman said.

She ventured that its roots likely grow toward a sewer line on Morton Avenue for a bountiful water source.

In the past, Mabry would gather the approximately 50 pounds of acorns the oak fruits for a teacher who used the seedlings in a Johnny Appleseed-type experiment.

For seven years, the teacher took her students across Tulare County with the seedlings in tow.

“The tree’s seedlings are probably all over this county,” Mabry said.

-- Contact Jenna Chandler at 784-5000, Ext. 1050 or jchandler@portervillerecorder.com.