In "Oak Tree Mirage," photographer Carrie J Culp captures a lone tree in the island's "Serengeti." The image echoes the story of Nantucket itself: a landscape shaped by centuries of negotiation between forest and moor, shade and openness, growth and preservatio
Neither forest nor moor alone, Nantucket has spent centuries negotiating the space between open land and trees
Don Costanzo & Keyley Jensen • June 4, 2026
The giant American elm on Surfside Road is one of the most recognizable landmarks on Nantucket. Rising above the roadway in front of Nantucket High School, its broad canopy has become so familiar that generations of island residents have known it simply as the Broccoli Tree. In 2026, the tree received a Liberty Tree designation, placing it among a select group of historic trees recognized for their cultural and civic significance.
The designation drew attention to a remarkable specimen, but it also highlighted a larger story. The Broccoli Tree is not simply an unusually large elm. It is a survivor from a period when Nantucket was actively rebuilding a landscape that had largely lost its trees. Planted sometime in the mid-nineteenth century and widely associated with the Coffin family planting efforts that helped transform downtown Nantucket, the tree stands as a living reminder that many of the island's most beloved landscapes are not ancient inheritances, but deliberate creations.
For many visitors, Nantucket is synonymous with open moors, rolling heathlands, and distant horizons uninterrupted by forests. The image is so deeply ingrained that it can be surprising to learn that the island contains significant woodlands, mature groves, and thousands of trees. Yet the apparent contradiction disappears when viewed through history. Nantucket's relationship with trees has never been simple. The island has spent centuries clearing them, planting them, protecting them, losing them, and in some cases preventing their return.
The Broccoli Tree captures that complexity perfectly. It is at once a native species, a cultural landmark, a product of intentional planting, and a symbol of a landscape that continues to evolve. Understanding why that elm matters requires understanding the much larger story of trees on Nantucket.
Burton Spruce Balkind
The Broccoli Tree on Surfside Road, planted in the mid-nineteenth century and designated a Liberty Tree in 2026, is a towering American elm that has become both a local landmark and a symbol of the island's complicated relationship with trees
A Treeless Island That Wasn't
One of the most persistent misconceptions about Nantucket is that it was always an open, nearly treeless island. Historical accounts certainly encourage that impression. By the nineteenth century, visitors frequently described broad expanses of open land, and Henry David Thoreau famously remarked during his 1854 visit that he saw virtually no trees except those planted around houses. Such observations were accurate descriptions of the island at that moment in time, but they did not necessarily reflect its deeper ecological history.
Long before European settlement, Nantucket supported a mixture of wooded and open habitats. The island was never completely forested. Salt spray, strong winds, periodic fire, and naturally poor soils created openings where grasslands and heathlands persisted. At the same time, sheltered interior areas supported substantial tree cover. Ecological studies suggest that native woodlands contained combinations of pitch pine, oak, birch, maple, hickory, beech, tupelo, sassafras, cedar, and other species adapted to coastal conditions.
The transformation began gradually after English settlement in 1659. Forests were cut for fuel and construction materials. Agricultural fields expanded. Common lands were opened for grazing. The greatest force shaping the landscape, however, may have been sheep. By the early eighteenth century, estimates suggest that between 25,000 and 30,000 sheep grazed Nantucket's commons. Their impact extended far beyond the grass they consumed. Young trees rarely survived repeated browsing, and the constant pressure prevented many wooded areas from regenerating.
Over generations, the cumulative effects of cutting, farming, and grazing dramatically altered the landscape. By the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, large portions of the island had become open grassland, heathland, and pasture. The windswept Nantucket that entered paintings, photographs, travel accounts, and local memory was not an untouched natural condition. It was, to a significant degree, a human-created landscape.
That distinction matters because it changes the way we understand the island today. The question is not whether Nantucket was once forested or once treeless. The reality is that it has always contained elements of both. The balance between them has shifted repeatedly over time, and continues to do so.
NHA
For centuries, sheep helped shape Nantucket's landscape. Their grazing suppressed young trees, expanded grasslands and heathlands, and contributed to the open island described by nineteenth-century visitors. Left: sheep grazing in a pasture, 1916. Right: a flock of sheep gathered at the edge of a pond on Harrison Gardner's farm in Quaise, circa 1890, with two cows visible in the background.
The Return of Wood
The decline of sheep grazing and agriculture initiated another profound transformation. As the forces that had maintained open landscapes weakened, trees and shrubs began reclaiming abandoned fields and former commons. The process was gradual, unfolding over decades rather than years, but its effects are visible throughout the island today.
Scrub oak expanded into former pasture. Pitch pine colonized neglected fields. Shrublands thickened and matured. Areas that nineteenth-century residents would have recognized as open countryside slowly developed into the wooded landscapes now found in places such as Ram Pasture, Milestone Road, and portions of Squam. What appears to many residents as long-established woodland is often the product of relatively recent ecological succession.
At the same time, a parallel story of intentional planting was unfolding. In 1847, Josiah Sturgis planted the pitch pines that would eventually become one of the defining visual elements of Milestone Road. A few years later, Henry Coffin began reintroducing American elms to downtown Nantucket, helping create the shaded streetscape that remains central to the town's identity. In 1911, schoolchildren carried catalpa seedlings home from Academy Hill School, planting trees that still bloom along West Chester Street and Prospect Street more than a century later.
Modern Nantucket tree cover emerged from the intersection of these two forces. Some trees returned because natural processes allowed them to return. Others appeared because residents intentionally planted them. Together they produced a landscape that is neither entirely natural nor entirely designed.
The result can be seen in the island's modern tree inventory. While Nantucket remains famous for its open spaces, substantial woody cover now occupies areas that were largely open a century ago. Forests and shrublands have expanded, even as conservation organizations work to preserve the rare grasslands and heathlands that define so much of the island's ecological character.
That tension between growth and preservation would eventually become one of the central questions in modern Nantucket conservation.
NHA
Two very different expressions of Nantucket's twentieth-century canopy. Left: lower Main Street in the 1920s, shaded by the elm-lined streetscape that became one of the island's defining civic landscapes. Right: "The Pines," photographed in 1940, part of a growing woodland landscape that emerged as trees returned to portions of the island after the decline of farming and sheep grazing
The Elm Island
If native forests tell one part of Nantucket's tree story, the island's public canopy tells another. Nowhere is that more evident than in the dominance of the elm.
The Town of Nantucket's 2024 Tree Inventory provides the clearest quantitative snapshot of the public urban forest. The survey documented 1,124 town trees representing 70 species. Of those, 321 were elms, making them by far the most common tree in the inventory. Maples followed with 149 trees, while locusts accounted for 121. The remainder included oaks, cherries, lindens, ash, zelkova, London plane trees, and numerous ornamental species. Approximately 76 percent of the inventoried trees were rated in good condition, while only about 2 percent were classified as poor or worse.
The inventory reflects more than statistics. It reveals how deeply Nantucket's public identity is tied to a particular kind of tree. Main Street's famous canopy remains one of the most recognizable streetscapes in New England, and its origins can be traced directly to Henry Coffin's efforts in the 1850s to reintroduce American elms to a largely treeless town.
Today, Nantucket's cultural relationship with trees often centers on those planted elms. Residents celebrate the Broccoli Tree. They mourn the loss of individual street trees. The collapse of the century-old Silver Street elm during a January 2024 storm became a community event because the tree itself had become part of the town's shared landscape. After surviving decades of weather, disease pressure, and urban stress, it finally succumbed to saturated soils and strong winds.
The attention given to such trees highlights a fascinating contrast. Nantucket's most celebrated trees are often planted trees. Meanwhile, some of the island's largest and oldest native trees grow quietly in forests and conservation lands, largely unnamed and unnoticed outside ecological circles. Few residents could identify the largest black oak in Squam Swamp, even though many of those native oaks are older and ecologically more significant than individual street trees that attract public attention.
That contrast speaks to the different roles trees play on Nantucket. Some function primarily as ecological communities. Others become civic landmarks. Both matter, but they are valued in different ways.
From top left: The Trustees of Reservations, Nantucket Land Bank, Old-Growth Forest Network, Bill Hoenk (Nantucket Land Bank)
While Nantucket's elm-lined streets receive much of the attention, some of the island's most important trees grow beyond town. Clockwise from top left: maritime woodland at Coskata; pitch pines at Millbrook; American beech at Reyes Pond; and wetland forest at Squam Swamp. Together, these landscapes represent the native and naturalized tree communities that have reclaimed parts of Nantucket over the past century.
The Native Forests of Squam, Coskata & Milestone
The trees that dominate Nantucket's public imagination are not necessarily the trees that dominate its ecology. While the island's cultural identity is strongly tied to the elms of Main Street and the Broccoli Tree on Surfside Road, the most significant native tree communities are found elsewhere, often away from roads, storefronts, and daily attention.
Squam Swamp offers perhaps the best example. Tucked into the northeastern portion of the island, it contains one of Nantucket's largest and most diverse wooded landscapes. Here, visitors find a very different Nantucket from the one typically featured. Black tupelos rise from wet soils. Red maples thrive in areas where freshwater offsets the island's chronic drought stress. Sassafras, black oak, white oak, American beech, holly, and other native species create a layered woodland that more closely resembles the island's pre-agricultural landscape than the open moors for which Nantucket is famous.
Coskata presents another variation on the theme. The maritime hardwood forests found there exist under much harsher conditions. Constant wind, salt spray, nutrient-poor soils, and periodic storm exposure create an environment where only the most adaptable species can persist. Mature black and white oaks form much of the canopy, accompanied by huckleberry, hazelnut, bayberry, and other species that have evolved to tolerate the difficult conditions of the outer coast.
Understanding Nantucket's forests requires understanding the island's soils. Nearly every aspect of tree distribution on Nantucket can be traced back to the glacial sands beneath them. The island's soils are generally acidic, low in organic matter, and often drought-prone. Freshwater can be scarce. Nutrients are limited. Wind and salt spray create additional stress. In ecological terms, Nantucket functions as a filter. Species do not simply need to survive one challenge; they must survive all of them simultaneously.
That reality explains why certain species repeatedly emerge as the island's ecological winners. Pitch pine thrives in sandy, exposed conditions where many other trees struggle. Scrub oak tolerates poor soils and drought while spreading aggressively into former fields. Eastern red cedar, black cherry, American holly, and black oak have all demonstrated an ability to persist despite the island's harsh conditions.
Other species succeed only where local conditions offer some relief. Red maples and black tupelos flourish in wet areas. Beeches tend to be found in protected interior locations. Many ornamental species survive in town only because irrigation, soil amendments, pruning, and maintenance compensate for conditions they would otherwise find challenging.
Milestone Road provides one of the most visible examples of how human intervention and ecological succession intersect on Nantucket. The corridor's famous pitch pines trace their origins to a planting effort undertaken by Josiah Sturgis in 1847. Over time, those trees became one of the defining visual features of the island. What began as a relatively modest planting effort helped establish a landscape that now feels permanent and inevitable, even though it originated from a specific human decision.
Elsewhere, trees tell more personal stories. At Reyes Pond, Betty Reyes created a landscape unlike any other on Nantucket. Over decades she planted specimen trees associated with places she had lived, visited, or loved. The result is less a traditional New England woodland than a living collection of memories, cultures, and experiences translated into vegetation. It serves as a reminder that landscapes are often autobiographical.
The same is true at Millbrook Woods, where the Land Bank has paired native woodland conservation with the revival of a heritage orchard. The Millbrook Heritage Orchard reconnects Nantucket to an agricultural tradition that largely disappeared as commercial agriculture declined. Apples, once common throughout New England, became less visible on Nantucket over time. The orchard represents an effort not merely to preserve trees, but to preserve a specific chapter of island history.
Taken together, Squam, Coskata, Milestone, Reyes Pond, and Millbrook illustrate an important truth. Nantucket's tree story is not one story. It’s a collection of overlapping stories involving ecology, conservation, agriculture, memory, and landscape design. Some of the island's most important trees are native. Others were planted intentionally. Some form forests, others stand alone. Each contributes to a landscape that is far more complex than the island's treeless reputation would suggest.
Photos courtesy of Dale Gary, Mary Longacre, NHA, Nantucket Conservation foundation
Protecting Nantucket's trees has always depended on the efforts of both professionals and volunteers. Top row, from left: Town Arborist Dale Gary; a plaque at the corner of Centre and India streets dedicating a Princeton American elm to Martha Johnson Walters in recognition of her tireless advocacy on behalf of Nantucket's trees; and Walters herself, whose work with the Nantucket Tree Fund helped support the preservation of the island's elm canopy. Bottom row: participants gather at Ram Pasture to learn about Southern Pine Beetle management, while Nantucket Conservation Foundation researchers examine beech leaves at Squam Swamp following the discovery of Beech Leaf Disease. Together, the images span decades of stewardship, from the fight against Dutch elm disease to the emerging challenges facing Nantucket's forests today.
Trees Under Threat
The threats facing Nantucket's trees have changed considerably over time. For much of the twentieth century, discussions of tree health on the island inevitably led to Dutch elm disease. The disease remains a concern, and the vulnerability of American elms continues to influence management decisions, but the modern threat landscape has become considerably more complicated.
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The island's response to Dutch elm disease also helped shape modern tree stewardship. During the 1980s and 1990s, efforts to protect Nantucket's iconic elm canopy were supported by the Nantucket Tree Fund, founded by Martha Johnson Walters and other advocates concerned about the future of the island's trees. The organization's fundraising and public education efforts helped support disease-management work and broader awareness of the importance of Nantucket's urban forest. The fight to preserve the island's elms continued under generations of tree stewards, including longtime Tree Warden Dave Champoux, who has chaired the Tree Advisory Committee for decades, former Town Arborist Roger Geiger, and current Town Arborist Dale Gary. Their work reflects a larger story that often goes unnoticed: Nantucket's canopy did not simply survive on its own. It has been actively managed, protected, and replanted for generations.
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The most significant contemporary challenge may be southern pine beetle. Long associated with warmer climates, the insect has steadily expanded northward in recent decades. Nantucket experienced its first major outbreak in 2023, when dozens of pitch pines at Ram Pasture became infested. Trails were closed. Forest management plans were accelerated, and ultimately nearly 100 trees were removed as part of a suppression effort designed to prevent further spread.
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The outbreak served as a warning. Pitch pine is one of the island's foundational species and it defines major portions of Milestone Road, Ram Pasture, and other wooded landscapes. A widespread decline would fundamentally alter the appearance and ecology of Nantucket. Forest managers increasingly view thinning, understory management, and fuel reduction not only as wildfire mitigation tools, but as strategies for improving resistance to future beetle outbreaks.
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Beech leaf disease presents a different challenge. The disease was detected on Nantucket in 2024 and immediately raised concerns because the island's beech population is relatively small. On the mainland, extensive beech forests provide a degree of redundancy. Nantucket does not have that luxury. The loss of mature beeches would remove a disproportionately important component of the island's native hardwood community.
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Ash trees face a similarly uncertain future. Emerald ash borer has already been detected on the island and has contributed to the loss of mature ash trees in both downtown Nantucket and 'Sconset. The insect has devastated ash populations throughout much of North America, and Nantucket is unlikely to be immune to its long-term effects.
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Additional threats continue to emerge. Hornbeam canker has become a significant concern for mature hornbeams. Black oaks have experienced damage associated with black oak gall wasp infestations, particularly in places such as Squam Swamp and Masquetuck Reservation. Drought stress has become increasingly common. Salt exposure remains a constant challenge, and storms periodically remove trees that have survived every other threat.
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The loss of the Silver Street elm in January 2024 illustrated how multiple factors often converge. The tree had survived for more than a century. It had endured disease pressure, urban conditions, and countless storms. Yet saturated soils combined with strong winds ultimately brought it down. The event underscored a reality that arborists understand well: large trees rarely succumb to a single cause. More often, they experience an accumulation of stresses over time.
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At the same time, Nantucket's tree advocates continue to look beyond preservation toward renewal. In 2026, the giant American elm known as the Broccoli Tree received a Liberty Tree designation following a proposal advanced by members of the Tree Advisory Committee. The initiative's next phase calls for planting disease-resistant Jefferson elms along Liberty and North Liberty Streets, extending a tradition of civic tree planting that stretches back more than a century. The project reflects a recurring theme in Nantucket's tree history: each generation inherits a canopy shaped by earlier decisions, while also determining what future generations will inherit.
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Human activity remains one of the most significant threats of all. Unlike insects or disease, which typically operate gradually, development and landscape clearing can remove mature tree cover almost instantly. Few examples demonstrated that more clearly than the incident that became known locally as the Christmas Catastrophe.
Why More Trees Isn't Always Better
Conversations about conservation often begin with a simple assumption: more trees are better than fewer trees. On Nantucket, however, that assumption quickly runs into complications.
The island's globally rare sandplain grasslands and heathlands exist precisely because trees do not dominate every landscape. These open habitats support species and ecological communities that have become increasingly uncommon throughout the Northeast. Left unmanaged, many of them would gradually transition into scrub oak thickets, pitch pine stands, and eventually more developed woodland.
As a result, some of Nantucket's most important conservation work involves preventing forest expansion rather than encouraging it.
Organizations such as the Nantucket Conservation Foundation, the Land Bank, and various public agencies routinely manage landscapes through mowing, brush cutting, prescribed fire, selective tree removal, and even targeted grazing. These activities can appear contradictory to people who associate conservation primarily with tree planting. In reality, they reflect a more nuanced understanding of the island's ecological history.
The same process that allows forests to reclaim former pasture can also eliminate rare grasslands. Succession is neither good nor bad. It is simply a natural process. Whether it should be encouraged depends entirely on the landscape in question. This tension becomes particularly apparent when comparing different parts of the island. In some locations, conservation goals focus on protecting mature forests and encouraging native tree health. In others, the objective is to preserve open viewsheds, heathlands, and grasslands that would otherwise disappear beneath expanding woody vegetation.
The distinction helps explain why Nantucket conservation sometimes involves cutting trees. The goal is not to oppose trees, it’s to preserve diversity.
The same complexity appears in discussions about development and tree removal. In late 2023 and early 2024, public attention focused on the removal of at least 137 Japanese black pines and an eastern red cedar from a coastal property at 2 Gully Road. The scale of the clearing generated controversy, legal disputes, and questions about permitting.
The incident became important not simply because of the number of trees involved, but because it highlighted how differently people value tree cover. To some residents, the removal represented the loss of a mature landscape. To others, it raised questions about private property rights and land management. Regardless of perspective, the episode demonstrated how quickly decades of growth can disappear.
The broader lesson is that Nantucket's relationship with trees cannot be reduced to a simple equation. More trees are sometimes desirable. Fewer trees are sometimes necessary. The challenge lies in understanding which landscapes are being protected and why.
Nantucket Conservation Foundation, Town of Nantucket
Neither fully forested nor truly treeless, Nantucket occupies a landscape in between. The island's future will be shaped not only by what grows naturally, but by the decisions made about which trees, forests, and open spaces are worth preserving
The Future of Nantucket's Canopy
The future of Nantucket's trees will be shaped by forces both familiar and new. Some challenges, such as storms, drought, and salt exposure, have always been part of island life. Others, including invasive insects and emerging diseases, reflect a rapidly changing ecological landscape.
The Town of Nantucket's 2024 Tree Inventory provides a useful starting point for understanding what is at stake. The inventory documented 1,124 public trees representing 70 species and established a modern baseline for management. More importantly, it demonstrated that the island's urban canopy is not a static collection of historic specimens, its s a living system that requires constant care, monitoring, and renewal.
The town has increasingly formalized that stewardship through its arborist, Tree Advisory Committee, Chapter 132 protections, and ongoing inventory efforts. Public tree removals are reviewed more carefully than in the past. Memorial tree plantings are guided by species suitability and long-term management considerations. Decisions that were once made informally are now incorporated into broader planning efforts.
At the same time, conservation organizations continue to confront a different set of questions. How should forests be managed in an era of southern pine beetle? Which habitats should be allowed to succeed naturally, and which should be maintained in an open condition? How should resources be allocated among grasslands, shrublands, wetlands, and forests?
Climate change may intensify many of these debates. Warmer winters may favor additional insect pests, and more frequent droughts could stress species already operating near the limits of their tolerance. Stronger storms may increase losses among large mature trees. At the same time, some species may find new opportunities as conditions change.
What seems certain is that Nantucket's future landscape will not emerge accidentally. Just as sheep grazing, elm planting, agricultural abandonment, and conservation management shaped the island in the past, today's decisions will shape the island that future generations inherit.
The Broccoli Tree offers a useful perspective on that reality. The tree did not simply appear, someone planted it. Others protected it and generations appreciated it. Its survival reflects countless decisions made over more than a century and a half. The same is true of Nantucket's broader landscape. The forests of Squam, the pitch pines of Milestone Road, the specimen trees of Reyes Pond, the heritage orchard at Millbrook, the grasslands preserved through active management, and the elm-lined streets of downtown all exist because people made choices.
Those choices continue today. The future of Nantucket's canopy will depend not only on what grows naturally, but on what the island decides is worth preserving. The question is no longer whether Nantucket should have trees, it is which trees, in which places, and for what purpose. That conversation, more than any individual specimen or disease outbreak, will determine the character of the island's landscape for generations to come.