Toronto’s tree professor comes to Bristol Warren

Professor Elwood Pricklethorn talks trees in elementary schools across the district

By Ted Hayes
Posted 5/3/17

Students in Bristol Warren’s elementary schools had a strange visitor last week — none other than Professor Elwood Pricklethorn.

Pricklethorn, a certified arborist and educator from Toronto, …

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Toronto’s tree professor comes to Bristol Warren

Professor Elwood Pricklethorn talks trees in elementary schools across the district

Posted

Students in Bristol Warren’s elementary schools had a strange visitor last week — none other than Professor Elwood Pricklethorn.

Pricklethorn, a certified arborist and educator from Toronto, Canada, spent the Arbor Day week visiting all of the district’s elementary schools to teach kids about the importance of trees to their health, the planet and their future. With thick glasses, a tussled white wig and suspenders he didn’t look like the typical professor. But Pricklethorn, whose visit to the district was arranged by former Bristol resident Paul Fletcher, had a very important message: Trees are “quite frankly, one of the most important natural resources known to us on this planet,” he told students at the Hugh Cole School Friday afternoon.

His half-hour talk — it was actually going to run thirty-tree minutes, he warned the students — was filled with puns: Holding up a bottle of maple syrup, he said he’d taken two shots of it to get going that morning. He showed the kids a partially deflated inflatable Earth, asking if students knew “Tree PR,” and the gags continued throughout the talk.

But along the way, the students learned that trees help keep urban areas cool, are the source of a large percentage of the consumer drugs on the market today, and create the oxygen we all breathe.

“I love trees,” he told them.

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