Weeping Beech Tree, undated photo.

Unbeknownst to the throngs of present day Flushing denizens, the town of Flushing was once the "cradle of America's horticultural business." The Linnaean Botanic Garden and Nursery was founded in 1737 by Robert Prince and provided maple trees to Jefferson's Monticello, among other influential customers. In the late 1830s, Samuel Parsons, a local Quaker, established his own nursery business, which would go on to provide the original trees and shrubs for both Central Park and Prospect Park. His business became America's most celebrated commercial nursery.

Parsons was a pioneering horticulturalist who introduced a number of plant species to North America. In 1847 he returned from a trip to Belgium with a four-inch-tall cutting of a weeping beach tree. He planted it near the John Bowne House (his wife was a Bowne descendant) and it grew... and grew.

By the middle of the 20th century the tree was massive: 60-feet-tall, with a 14-foot trunk, and an 85-foot-wide umbrella of branches. This tree was considered the mother of all other weeping beech trees in the United States. In 1966 the tree was designated a living landmark, along with the 1885-planted magnolia grandiflora on Lafayette Avenue in Bedford-Stuyvesant.

Despite more than a century of hardy growth, the weeping beech began to deteriorate in the 1970s. Even with serious efforts, including fertilizer injections and cables to keep it standing, the tree was pronounced dead in 1998. Following a brief funeral, the landmark tree was chopped down from its spot behind Kingsland Homestead, the home to the Queens Historical Society. A considerable stump and a number of weeping beech offspring remain. The younger beech trees have thrived since the loss of their progenitor, growing to considerable height themselves.