A tree that's as pretty as a poem ** A sycamore in Upper Saucon that's older than the nation gets a trim.

Carters, Tom and Priscilla, had a bad moment Thursday morning when they drove past their favorite tree -- what, you don't have one? -- and saw a bunch of tree company trucks parked around it.

"They're not taking it down, are they?" Priscilla asked, aghast as she peered out the passenger side window at the sycamore on Old Bethlehem Pike -- a wonder of nature that has shaded this patch of Upper Saucon Township since George Washington had real teeth, and perhaps much longer than that.

No, someone told her. It's just getting a haircut.

The Carters were relieved. They live down near Quakertown but go out of their way to look at the tree whenever they get a chance, ever since they came across it years ago. "We take our grandkids past to look at it," Tom said. "We check on it like a baby."

It's quite a tree, everyone agrees. It is 65 feet tall, give or take. The trunk is nearly 27 feet around at the widest point, and the crown is 40 paces across -- about 120 feet, according to the educated guess of the man hired to prune it, Jim Evans of Jim Evans Tree Care in Coopersburg.

That would make it among the biggest sycamores in the state, he said. It's certainly one of the biggest in Lehigh County, though attributing superlatives to trees is a tricky thing because someone always finds a bigger, older, fatter one.

In any case, this tree can hold its own in any discussion of beautiful trees. It fills the yard of an 1850s stone house, a rental property owned by the Stabler Land Company. The largest branches are as big around as some mature trees. It has a long, deep scar on the east side of the trunk, probably the result of a long-ago lightning strike.

"This is kind of extraordinary," Evans said. "Usually they die off before they get this size."

No one wants to see that happen. That's why Stabler hired Evans to perform a "preservation pruning" -- removing dead wood where insects might find harbor, and trimming away suckers, the little stray branches that sprout along the trunk and sap energy away from the main branches.

By midmorning Thursday, one member of Evans' crew, Rich Kesen, was in a harness high in the branches, casting down bits and pieces of debris. Colleagues Denyelle Berghold and Mikey Skriletz watched him, marveling at his ease up there in squirrel territory.

"I won't go that high," Skriletz said.

Berghold nodded. "You've gotta be young," she said.

Evans -- a former U.S. Navy quartermaster who had plans to sign on with a lobster-fishing fleet but was diverted into tree work almost 30 years ago -- said it would take all day to finish the job and maybe a few hours this morning.

He seemed genuinely taken with the tree and spoke of it almost as if it were human, especially as he assessed the lightning scar and told how trees compartmentalize their wounds, walling them off from the rest of the body.

He judged the tree to be sturdy and healthy for its age. Sycamores can live 500 years or more, and Evans figured this one to be at mid-life, perhaps.

"It's well over 200, probably 250 years old," he said, estimating by the girth of the trunk. "That would classify it as a George Washington tree. It was young when George Washington was around."

And that, of course, means it is older than the nation. It was growing through the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, the Civil War, the Gay Nineties, the Roaring Twenties, the Great Depression and every other chapter of your American history textbook.

It was growing when Ben Franklin invented bifocals and when Alexander Graham Bell patented the telephone. It was growing when your great-great-grandmother came through Ellis Island and when your uncle went ashore at Iwo Jima. It is far, far older than photography, electric lights and the Napoleonic Wars.

"It's just a tremendous tree," said Tom Carter, its biggest fan. "We love that tree."

TO SEE THE SYCAMORE

*The sycamore is at 4355 Old Bethlehem Pike in Upper Saucon Township, between Center Valley Parkway and Saucon Valley Road. From Route 309, head north on Route 378, turn left on Center Valley Parkway and left on Old Bethlehem Pike. The tree will be on the left.

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