This weeping hemlock was a celebrity once.
Eastern Hemlock
Tsuga canadensis
The eastern hemlock is a slow-growing conifer of the Appalachian and Great Lakes forests. We map 3 of them, in 3 cities.
At Morris Arboretum in Philadelphia, a weeping hemlock came from the 1876 Centennial Exposition, where the weeping form caused a sensation among horticulturists; it was dug up and moved to the Meadowbrook Avenue gate in 1947, and its twin by the pond fell in a snowstorm in February 2024. In Minneapolis, at the far western edge of the range, Eloise Butler planted hemlocks by hand in 1911 and 1914, and the biggest of them is now a state co-champion of a species Minnesota lists as Endangered. Delaware's second-largest grows in Brandywine Cemetery in Wilmington, 2.59 metres round and 25.6 metres tall, though nobody has posted a dated sighting of it in recent years.
Philadelphia
Minneapolis
Minnesota has perhaps fifty mature eastern hemlocks left, and the largest one in Minneapolis was put in the ground by hand.
Wilmington, Delaware
The second-largest eastern hemlock in Delaware grows in a cemetery a few minutes' walk from downtown Wilmington.
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