Wheeler Oak, bearing the name of Benjamin Ide Wheeler, eighth president of the University, provided shade for women students, who traditionally occupied the east portion of the Wheeler Hall steps, the men claiming the west. "Meet you at the oak" replaced "Meet you at North Hall steps," as the phrase designating the new student-gathering place after the new classroom building opened in 1917. Dating from 1824, the oak was weakened by disease and removed in 1934. To help finance a memorial, students organized a Button Drive in the spring of 1935, selling thousands of large brass buttons for five cents apiece. The following year a concrete tablet depicting the old tree in bronze was placed at the spot where it stood. A replacement tree—the present oak—was added just to the west, transplanted from Observatory Hill in 1951.

Stephens Oak, designated by a bronze plaque set into a small boulder on the sloping lawn of Faculty Glade, was the largest live oak on campus in 1919 when it was named in memory of beloved history professor Henry Morse Stephens. The site was sanctified by a service held during the ten o'clock hour, coinciding with the professor's most popular class. Rooted between his former Faculty Club residence and the student union bearing his name, the oak overlooked the glade where Stephens greeted each incoming and graduating class. It was the last of the mature oaks that lived for more than 200 years.

A century ago, nearly 300 live oaks stood on the central campus. The number has increased to about 450 today, the result of planting young trees to replace those lost and adding others with new landscaping. They have persevered despite building construction and windstorms, moth invasions and decay, and disease, including the threat of Sudden Oak Death, which so far has not claimed a single tree.

Photograph and story by Harvey Helfand '66. A former Berkeley campus planner, Helfand is the author and photographer of Campus Guide: The University of California Berkeley, the authoritative guidebook to Cal's 132-year-old campus.

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