HAMMOND, Ore. -- Under a fluorescent lamp on Rick Mock's dinner table, branch tips from one of Oregon's oldest living things are sprouting, and may carry on the line of the 700-year-old Sitka spruce that blew down last year.

KGW photo

What's left of the Sitka Spruce

A December windstorm brought down the Seaside Spruce, or Klootchy Creek Giant, which had been tied with a tree in Washington for the largest of its kind.

Mock is rooting seven pieces from the tips of a branch he found on the hulking piece of trunk that fell. New green needles are sprouting from one of them.

What's left of the tree that was once 200 feet tall stands in a Clatsop County park, so Mock figures his cuttings are county property. He plans to turn them over to the county as soon as he's sure they'll survive.

Steve Meshke, head of Clatsop County's parks, says he welcomes the effort.

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He says people shouldn't disturb what remains of the tree, and that it would be nice if one of Mock's cuttings could be planted nearby.

Mock said his research on growing a spruce from cuttings indicated there is only a 20 percent chance of success with a 60-year-old tree. Cuttings from a 700-year-old tree seemed like a long shot.

"At that point I had given up, basically," he said. "I figured there was no chance."

But something about the tree, where he sometimes stopped to eat his lunch and linger, kept nagging at him.

"For some reason it just kept popping into my head," he said. "Something that's been around that long, there's got to be something special to it. Something about it allowed it to escape the ax."

So he visited the tree in January as did others seeking chunks of the fallen giant as souvenirs.

He pruned a small green branch off the downed section of trunk and took it home.

He picked up basic gardening supplies such as peat pots and gravel.

He cut seven tips off the branch, popped them into the pots with potting soil and set them under a fluorescent light. A sign on an adjacent door says: "Please close the door carefully. Sleeping Giants."

Mock, who works for the Pacific States Marine Fisheries Commission, enjoys gardening and admits to a green thumb.

He lacks the greenhouses and chemical solutions some people use to sprout cuttings so he made makeshift humidity tents with Ziploc bags.

He is pretty confident that most will survive. In a week or so, he figures, he will remove the plastic bags. A week or so after that he thinks he can turn them over to the county.

Meshke says he isn't sure what the county will do with them. He has gotten requests from people who wanted chunks of the tree to turn into totem poles, guitars, furniture and more.

"You name it, I've had calls about it," he said. He has rejected all of them "because I could dole it out to people all over the U.S., and there'd be nothing left."

Paul Ries, an Oregon Department of Forestry arborist, says there's a limited time after the tree fell when cuttings are likely to take root.

He would like to see one planted near the state Capitol, perhaps.

He said Meshke told him that the county couldn't let him keep any but that he would at least get visitation rights.

"I just hope she lives another 700 years," he said. "That would be my reward."