Tacoma Silent Trees: Tulip Tree Speaks at Wright Park

Planted around 1895 at Wright Park, the tulip tree has stood like a green lighthouse in the midst of a shifting city, quietly absorbing 130 years of Tacoma’s weather, whispers, and wayward romances.

“I’ve stood here longer than your grandparents’ ghosts and kept quieter than a librarian at sunrise,” says the tulip tree rooted on the west side of Wright Park. “I’ve watched horse-drawn carriages give way to streetcars rattling along Yakima Avenue. I saw ladies in corsets and parasols promenade past Bird Lake, and the construction of the W. W. Seymour Conservatory in 1908, its glass dome rising like a cathedral of light across the lawn. I felt the stomp of boots as soldiers drilled in the park during World War I, and I stood still through the Spanish Flu epidemic, when fresh air was considered medicine.”

Peaks & Pints first partnered with the Tacoma Tree Foundation (TTF) in the fall of 2019, pairing our then-house beer, Kulshan Brewing Tree-Dimensional IPA, with TTF-selected trees around Tacoma. For the 2024–25 season, we brewed our eighth house IPA at Loowit Brewing in downtown Vancouver. Since the brewery is named after Mount St. Helens and its eruption silenced many trees, we’ve named the beer Silent Trees IPA and partnered with the Tacoma Tree Foundation once again to tell the stories of their favorite trees. TTF doesn’t just plant trees—they conspire with chlorophyll, orchestrating quiet revolutions in shade and oxygen, one rootball at a time, until entire neighborhoods exhale a little easier. The TTF sent us to Wright Park to chat with the tulip tree on the west side of the park close to South I Street and South Sixth Avenue.

“I’ve shaded lovers during the Roaring Twenties, heard jazz drift from park benches, and watched Depression-era families gather for free summer picnics and cheap joy,” adds the tulip tree. “During World War II, I stood tall as troops once again passed through Tacoma, and children practiced air raid drills beneath my branches, their eyes cast toward a sky that might fall.”

Wright Park: A Cathedral of Chlorophyll

Wright Park was not born; it was conjured—whispered into being by a railroad baron with a flair for philanthropy and a fondness for shade. In the emerald spring of 1886, Charles B. Wright, namesake and benevolent schemer, handed over 20 acres to the city of Tacoma with one condition: plant trees—lots of them—and never stop. Enter Edward Otto Schwagerl, landscape mystic and horticultural alchemist, who stitched together paths and ponds and leafy labyrinths with old-world precision. By the time the W. W. Seymour Conservatory bloomed into glass-domed glory in 1908, the park had transformed into a living reliquary of global flora—a 27-acre poem of bark, breeze, and botanical diplomacy. Today, Wright Park is not merely visited; it is wandered, devoured, confessed in—an urban sanctuary humming with the gossip of 600 trees, each a whisper from a different continent.

“I became a background character in generations of family photos, grinning kids in paper hats holding balloons and ice cream,” the tree continues. “I’ve witnessed the shift from segregation to tentative integration—when parks became places where all of Tacoma could sit under the same shade, and teenagers with transistor radios declared rebellion by simply lying in the grass.”

The Tulip Tree & Other Floral Celebrities

Wright Park’s tulip tree is neither the oldest nor the flashiest, but she looms, with a trunk like a column from a forgotten temple and spring blossoms shaped like teacups from a woodland séance. She is also a certified Champion Tree, part of Wright Park’s not-so-secret botanical rockstar tour: the Champion Tree Tour. Armed with a modest booklet and a thirst for arboreal wonder, you can trace a route past giant sequoias, silver lindens, ginkgos, and Roosevelt’s pet oak. It is not merely a stroll—it is a pilgrimage, each tree tagged and named like saints in leafy vestments, their rings echoing centuries of sighs, storms, and stolen kisses beneath their branches.

“I’ve endured when the park got a bit frayed around the edges—when skateboarders outnumbered squirrels and the conservatory windows cracked with time,” quips the tree. “And then I watched rebirth: grants and gardeners, volunteers with mulch-streaked hands, the rise of Tacoma’s urban forest program, and the 2008 Conservatory restoration gleaming like a second sunrise.”

Tulip Tree | Myaamia Name: Oonseentia | Liriodendron tulipifera

“The tulip tree, named after its flower’s aesthetic similarity to tulip flowers, is native to eastern North America from southern Canada to northern Florida, and is the state tree of Tennessee, Indiana, and Kentucky,” explains Julie Wolf, communications coordinator for the Tacoma Tree Foundation. “It is characterized by its tall stature, in some areas growing up to 150 feet, and living to be up to 300 years old. From April to June, you might be able to recognize this tree by its green-yellow and orange flowers, waxy green four-pointed leaves, deeply ridged bark, or in fall, you might know it by its bright yellow-orange foliage and large brown seed cones that resemble the head of a frizzled paintbrush.”

“Oh, beer-soaked Peaks & Pints wouldn’t know. “The bearded dude arrived with his iPhone a month late and a blossom short, like tourists at the tail end of a miracle, snapping my sun-drenched limbs while my petals lie composted in memory,” says the tulip tree, rooted and regal on the west side of Wright Park. “Come in June next time, darling. That’s when I flirt with the sun and wear my best colorful crown. But I’ll forgive you—bring me a saison and we’ll call it even.”

“Tulip trees are adapted to living in a wide range of climates and can be planted almost anywhere in the United States where there are well-drained, rich soils,” adds Wolf. “They are known in the lumber industry for their straight trunks and a unique type of wood, which is neither a hardwood nor a softwood, but what is called an accumulation-wood because of its ability to grow very quickly and absorb a huge amount of carbon dioxide along the way. These trees are so effective at carbon sequestration that in some areas they are being used for commercial carbon capture. They are also prolific producers of nectar and pollen, which are a critical source of food for pollinators. These characteristics make them popular choices for planting within our urban forests.

“But long before tulip trees were used in the lumber industry, they were known by the Anishinaabe, Ottawa, Potawatomi, and Miami tribes as a tree of peace and were used to craft canoes and medicine,” she continues. “One historical source mentions a tulip tree (also known as white poplar) that was planted to establish a place where all the tribes could meet, make laws, and establish alliances. In Tacoma, visit the tulip trees in Wright Park to experience the calm and peace this tree can bring.”

“Calm and peace?” the tulip tree interjects with a laugh. “I now live in an age of hashtags and climate alarms. I have been Instagrammed, picnicked under, and possibly hugged by strangers seeking a spiritual reboot. I weather hotter summers and drier roots, but I still bloom—defiant, elegant, and ancient, my flowers still shaped like cups waiting to catch forgotten prayers.”

Loowit Brewing Silent Trees IPA

Check out the tulip tree on Wright Park’s west side, and then head to Tacoma’s Proctor District for a pint or Campfire Crowler of Loowit Silent Trees IPA (6.6%) at Peaks & Pints. Loowit Brewing in Vancouver, Washington, collaborated with the Tacoma craft beer lodge on their house beer. Paying homage to trees and outdoor enthusiasts who join Peaks daily in Tacoma’s Proctor District, Silent Trees IPA is the perfect beer to toast passing trees on powder, currents, or trails—and reveal the sprains. Silent Trees IPA continues Peaks & Pints’ love affair with old-school piney IPAs, this time brewed with Simcoe, Columbus, and Chinook hops for a blend of pine and citrus notes.

The tulip tree hasn’t moved an inch, but it’s seen Tacoma transform from sawdust and steam to espresso and electric scooters—all while holding court like a silent green monarch. Hug the tulip, then head to Peaks for a pint. Cheers!

LINK: Loowit Silent Trees IPA inspires Tacoma Tree stories

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LINK: Tacoma Silent Trees: Breaking Silence near the Rhododendron Garden

LINK: Tacoma Silent Trees: Breaking Silence at Swan Creek Park

LINK: Tacoma Silent Trees: Breaking Silence Near People’s Park

LINK: Tacoma Silent Trees: Breaking Silence at Oak Tree Park

LINK: Kulshan brews Peaks and Pints Tree-dimensional IPA

LINK: Peaks & Pints beer and cider cooler inventory