Historical Name: Joyce Kilmer
Common Name: White Oak
Latin Name: Quercus alba
“I think that I shall never see, A poem lovely as a tree.” These opening lines of Joyce Kilmer’s Trees are widely recognized in the United States. Millions of grade school students across the nation have studied and even memorized this best known poem by Kilmer. Born in New Brunswick, NJ, Kilmer lived in our state for 20 of his 31 years before being killed in action in France during WWI. Kilmer attended Rutgers University for two years, and legend has it that his inspiration for writing Trees was a huge White Oak growing on the grounds of the University’s College of Agriculture. The tree succumbed to old age in 1963, in spite of valiant efforts by University horticulturists to keep it alive. A few years before its death acorns collected from the tree were germinated. Two of the resulting trees grace the Rutgers campus today. The Joyce Kilmer White Oak found in UCNJ’s Historic Tree Grove is a “grandchild” of the original, having been grown from an acorn collected from one of Kilmer Oak’s offspring in 2000.