The State Champion White Willow of Finch Arboretum

The largest white willow in Washington started life as somebody's garden tree. A woman came to the Spokane parks department to tell them so: her family planted it more than ninety years ago, when the ground that is now the John A. Finch Arboretum was still houses rather than trees. The houses went. The willow stayed, and it is now the state champion of its species, the biggest known white willow in Washington, on the word of Jeff Perry, the city's lead arborist. It is also on borrowed time, and the city says so plainly. In 2019 Perry gave it roughly thirty more years before it starts to split and come down, which is how large willows usually go: not in one storm but in pieces, over years. That is the bargain with the species. White willow grows fast and soft and generous, puts on size quickly and does not do centuries the way an oak does, so a willow of championship size is a rarer thing to stand in front of than ninety years makes it sound. Its history rests on one newspaper feature and one family's memory, which is thinner than most trees here carry. If you know who planted it, or anything about the houses that used to stand here, tell us.