The Kate Sessions Tipu Tree

This tipu is the last living thing from Kate Sessions' final nursery. Sessions, the horticulturist San Diego calls the mother of Balboa Park, bought seven acres at Garnet and Pico in Pacific Beach in the 1920s, one source dating the purchase to 1924, and ran Soledad Terrace on the land. The nursery is gone. The tree is what is left of it. She planted it in 1928 according to katestrees.org, a site kept by a researcher of her work, which also records it as a protected heritage tree. The California Historical Landmarks record gives the looser 'planted in the 1920s', which agrees. Nobody has published a girth or a height for it, so if you happen to be carrying a tape measure, we would like the number. The bronze plaque beside it is California Historical Landmark No. 764, dedicated in 1961. Read it carefully, because it commemorates the nursery site and Sessions herself rather than this tree. The distinction matters here: her name gets attached to a great many San Diego trees without any document behind it, and this one is the exception, independently credited to her by several sources. Tipuana tipu comes from Bolivia and Argentina. In early summer it drops sprays of yellow-orange flowers over whatever is underneath, which here is a street corner.