Matthew Beckman, head of the biology department at Augsburg University, arrived at his office on the morning of Aug. 27 to find the giant cottonwood tree outside his office had fallen. 

“I pulled into the parking lot, and I burst into tears,” Beckman said. “I saw the tree was down.”

The tree was just one of many that went down or were damaged in the pair of thunderstorms that hit the Twin Cities at the end of August. 

The storms had winds up to 65 mph, resulting in over one thousand debris clean-up orders in Minneapolis, according to a statement from the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board.

Among the fallen trees was a cottonwood tree on the Augsburg University campus which fell early in the morning on Aug. 27, according to Augsburg University plant biology professor Leon van Eck. 

“It’s a plains cottonwood, so it’s really, really large,” van Eck said. “When it had collapsed it basically filled the entire greenspace where it was planted.”

The tree, locally known as The Loveliest of Trees, was a treasured part of the community for people on and off the Augsburg campus, van Eck said. 

The tree sat in a greenspace near the Augsburg community garden and was visited by many people throughout the day, Beckman said.

“I’ve worked here for 17 years and I’ve been watching this tree out of my office for the last six years,” Beckman said. “Every day I would see people under the tree having lunch, just relaxing, having community there, so we’re gonna miss that.”

Van Eck said he was inspired to write an obituary for the tree after hearing how important it was for the local community.

“My first reaction was that this tree was special to me and a lot of people,” van Eck said. “I knew that I wanted to commemorate it in some way.”

The obituary combined emotions people had for The Loveliest of Trees and the biology behind its death, van Eck said.

“This is a sad day for Augsburg University: No longer will we be able to watch a bald eagle take flight from the regal branches of The Loveliest of Trees,” van Eck said in the obituary. “But a plains cottonwood was always meant to have an ephemeral existence, being a fast-growing pioneer species of the Mississippi River floodplain.”

The obituary, posted to the Augsburg Greenhouse Instagram, is not the only way Augsburg is preserving the memory of The Loveliest of Trees. Some Augsburg faculty, including Director of the Sabo Center for Democracy and Citizenship Alexander Fink, organized a memorial service for the tree, Beckman said.

The memorial was held on Aug. 30 and was opened by two campus pastors, Babette Chapman and John Schwehn, who began by saying a few words about the tree, Beckman said.

Afterward, the memorial was opened to members of the community to share their thoughts and feelings on the fallen tree.

“On the surface, you may not think a memorial for a tree would be important, but it really did bring the community together,” Beckman said. 

In addition to the memorial, cuttings and samples of the tree were taken to keep and study, Van Eck said. Two University of Minnesota professors, Daniel Griffin and Kurt Kipfmueller, took samples of the tree to determine the tree’s age.

According to Beckman, it is thought the tree was about 70 to 80 years old. 

People connect with trees in ways they do not with other plants because they can seem like permanent fixtures in people’s lives, van Eck said.

“It’s easy to see how people can ascribe a lot of meaning to a particular specimen of a tree species,” van Eck said. “The changes that you see in the tree kind of reflects the changes in your own life.”