Professional photographer Marcus Manley proves once again that you can’t photograph urban decay in Detroit without showcasing our favorite tree, Ailanthus altissima, in this lovely b&w winter shot: As the buildings tumble down, the trees grow up.

Submitted by Manny
I have always been fascinated by the Ailanthus tree since I was a kid growing up in Dorchester, Massachusetts, a rough inner city section of Boston. I used to crush the leaves in my hands and smell its intoxicating aroma. I used to daydream about possible medicinal and or industrial uses for it. Perhaps deep in its chemical makeup there may be a cure for cancer and we would never know because of its notoriety.
The tree shares the same struggle as do the people it …

Who among you be Ailanthus,
The Witness-Who-Reaches High?
If you question, you are elm beaten down by exhaust
or calloused feet
If you spring up in expectance, you are
the frond of Ailanthus
Absurd in its giving
Of shade to the dreamless street.
Who among you be Ailanthus,
The Witness-Who-Reaches-High?
Who among you be fair Ailanthus,
Tree-of-Heaven?

July 4, 1977 || Copyright © 1977, 2005 by David Newkirk. All rights reserved.
Poem reproduced from this location.
Part of the collection David Newkirk: Writings.

Gentle readers, there is a rock band by the name of Cracker, and this band, they have a song where they mention our tree of interest. Solely for the sake of research, I present the lyrics for you below:

By Adrienne Rich
Ailanthus, goldenrod, scrapiron, what makes you flower?
What burns in the dump today?
Thick flames in a grey field, tended
By two men: one derelict ghost,
One clearly apter at nursing destruction,
Two priests in a grey field, tending the flames
Of stripped-off rockwool, split
Mattresses, a caved-in chickenhouse,
Mad Loy’s last stack of paintings, each a perfect black lozenge
Seen from a train, stopped
As by design, to bring us
Face to face with the flag of our true country:
Violet-yellow, black-violet,
Its heart sucked by slow fire
O my America
This then your desire?
by Adrienne Rich, 1964
From Collected Early Poems 1950-1970 …

Ailanthus must have been widely planted by New York City in the 19th century. The great American author Henry James mentions Ailanthus in his description of Washington Square in the book of the same name (1880), excerpted by PBS.
The ideal of quiet and of genteel retirement, in 1835, was found in Washington Square, where the doctor [sic] built himself a handsome, modern, wide-fronted house, with a big balcony before the drawing-room windows, and a flight of white marble steps ascending to a portal which was also faced with white …

From Austria comes an interesting website documenting alien invasives, with particular attention paid to Ailanthus: Ruderal.heim.at. The webmaster sends along a nice picture:

Gardening With Nature by James van Sweden, the foremost american landscape architect of the day along with his partner Wolfgang Oehme. In the first chapter he describes his main influences then goes on to tell how he got started back in l971 when he asked Oehme to help him landscape the backyard of his old two-story victorian rowhouse in the Georgetown area of Washington DC. “Almost immediately my garden became a showplace. No one had ever seen anything quite like it… the high canopy of the Ailanthus altissima gives the …

John Steinbeck, the great American author, had occassion to notice Ailanthus. He describes them in his essay “The Making of a New Yorker” for the New York Times in 1943.
The very first time I came to the city [New York] and settled was engineered by a girl. Looking back from the cool position of middle age I can see that most of my heroic decisions somehow stemmed from a girl. I got an apartment on East 51st Street between First and Second Avenues, but even then I kept contact …

By John Marin
—————————————————–
AILANTHUS
Please take a moment and think about the Ailanthus.
No-one plans it.
No-one plants it.
No-one waters,
Or prunes,
Or sprays it,
Or gives it plant food or weed killer or even manure.
It squeezes between tall buildings,
Through sidewalk gratings,
And cracks in concrete,
And in angles of fences where mowers can’t reach it.
It survives
Unassisted, and thrives.
It stands up to road salt,
And car fumes,
And dog piss,
And the hardened indifference of big-city life.
Only let it be:
And it will sink deep roots,
And form stout branches,
And cast a shade as good as that of any planted tree.
The Ailanthus is all …