Trees grow and die, not only in Brooklyn but in the New Jersey community of West Caldwell as well.
This bedroom suburb of New York is about to lose a piece of its history, a Cucumber Magnolia tree that dates back to the late 1800s.
Almost 125 years old, it long ago became the township's symbol, on everything from stationary to police cars.
Standing on busy Bloomfield Avenue, its pending demise has led to an effort to save cuttings from the Magnolia. They have been grafted onto magnolia root stock at a nursery in Sussex.
Those saplings will be genetic copies of the original tree, first brought to West Caldwell by the dairy farmer who owned the property.
It survived the blizzard of 1888. And when highway officials were planning the extension of Bloomfield Avenue, townfolk forced them to relocate the road a few feet to the north.
A similar protest in the 1960s saved the tree from a new Friendly's restaurant. In that campaign, Lady Bird Johnson wrote a letter as First Lady on behalf of the tree.
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Clay Allison of the Beaver Brook Nursery in Wantage said the grafts should be ready to plant in about two years. And West Caldwell Councilman Joe Cecere said they will be put in parks, at schools, even sold to the public, and one of course, will replace the original whenever it finally dies.
That way, he said, this living heritage of his town will last for many generations to come.
