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Branch Manager
HIDDEN BOUNTY
USC has five dozen fruit trees, and many can be found near Parkside International Residential College and behind certain campus kitchens. Students are welcome to take the fruit, and avocados are always the fastest to disappear off the trees, Wallich says.
Thousands of trees shade USC’s campuses. Meet the man who keeps them happy and healthy.
Tall Tales Michael Wallich, USC’s dedicated arborist, starts his daily trek through campus at 5 a.m., keeping an eye out for signs that a tree might be struggling. He looks for compacted soil that can squeeze the life out of roots. Curling leaves could signal water trouble. And he’s always on guard against two pests— tuliptree scale and the polyphagous shot hole borer—that have decimated trees throughout Southern California. “For a campus as old as it is, we normally would be losing 10, 15 trees a year, but we’re not,” he says. “I’ve been here five years, and we’ve only lost four trees. I’m still not too thrilled about that. I hate to lose any tree.” To protect his leafy charges, Wallich has been known to chastise truck drivers who cause “inadvertent trimming” of foliage. He generally goes easier on students when they hang hammocks from trees, encouraging them to loop their straps around the main trunk instead of branches. And although he’s approaching retirement age, Wallich (pictured below) says he has no plans to relinquish his role as the guardian of greenery. “I’m not going anywhere. I love this job.” ERIC LINDBERG
Some trees come with stories attached.
Green Gains USC reaps many environmental benefits from its trees:
5
MILLION GALLONS
Volume of water absorbed into the aquifer during rainstorms that would otherwise run off as wastewater
10
usc trojan family
TFM Summer19-FINAL_HY.indd 10
1
MILLION POUNDS Amount of carbon locked in trees, reducing the net release of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere
300,000 POUNDS
Quantity of fine particles—part of smog— that tree leaves absorb annually from air
394,000
KILOWATT HOURS
Energy saved each year due to trees that shade buildings and reduce the need for air conditioning
Legend has it that USC planted 50 trees in Founders Park— one for each U.S. state. Heavy winds or lightning supposedly took out Arizona’s tree at some point. Whether the story is true or not, Trojans from the Grand Canyon State can rest easy and know they’re represented arboreally. A section of a petrified tree from Arizona, a gift from the Class of 1887, stands near the southeast corner of Doheny Memorial Library. Gold medal winners at the 1936 Berlin Olympics received oak seedlings as symbols of the Olympic spirit. Two were planted in Associates Park in recognition of discus thrower Ken Carpenter ’39 and 100-meter relay runners Foy Draper ’36, Ralph Metcalfe MA ’39 and Frank Wykoff ’33.
summer 2019
6/10/19 4:17 PM
USC17650-00_p010.pgs 06.10.2019 16:42