The Weeping Hemlock at the Meadowbrook Gate

This weeping hemlock was a celebrity once. In 1876 it went on show at the Centennial Exposition in Fairmount Park, the world's fair that marked America's hundredth birthday, where the Parsons & Sons nursery exhibited weeping hemlocks and, by the arboretum's account, created a sensation among horticulturists. Two of those exhibition hemlocks came to the Morris estate afterwards. One was planted near the pond. The other went in near the Key Fountain, and in 1947 it was dug up and moved to a new home at the Meadowbrook Avenue gate. Moving a tree of that age is a gamble. It worked. The twin by the pond was not so lucky. On 13 February 2024 a wet, heavy snowstorm brought it down, and the arboretum wrote its obituary. If you are carrying the older printed Great Trees brochure, its stop eleven describes that pond tree, which is gone. The survivor is this one, at the gate. It is a weeping form of the eastern hemlock, the branches falling rather than reaching, and at roughly 150 years, counted from its first public appearance in 1876, it has now outlived both its sister and the fair that made it famous. Entry to the arboretum is paid. The pin is approximate; head for the Meadowbrook Avenue gate.