The descendant of the Wye Oak standing tall in my back yard turns out to have rather dubious parentage.

Like all the thousands and thousands of white oaks grown from Wye Oak seedlings, my tree is, genetically speaking, only half Wye. Even in the tree world it takes two to pollinate.

"Oaks won't self-pollinate," says Richard Garrett, manager of the state's John S. Ayton Forest Tree Nursery in Preston. "So the female flowers that were on the Wye Oak got pollinated by male pollen from surrounding oak trees.

"So when that acorn formed and dropped, you had half the genetic material of the Wye Oak in that acorn. And half from another white oak in the neighborhood."

So my tree, like all the rest of the descendants of the Wye Oak so far, has a wayward pollinator in its background, some nameless vagabond propagating indiscriminately, sharing genetic material with the now fallen giant.

Mine's a swell tree, slightly taller than my modest rowhouse on Labyrinth Road, spreading out sometimes more than my neighbors like. But I think of it as a noble tree, like the offspring of the mistress of some English monarch.

Nobody knows how many descendants of the Wye Oak exist.

"Many, many thousands," Garrett says. "I know one year we did 12,000 [seedlings] alone."

The state forestry service began sending out seedlings at least as long ago as June 1, 1941, when the Wye Oak became the official state tree. About 1,000 seedlings, 2 years old and 2 feet high, went out that year. The tree, only about 410 years old then, was already 95 feet tall, just a foot shorter than it was when it fell during a thunderstorm on June 6 in Talbot County. It was the nation's champion white oak.

My Wye Oak arrived as a very unprepossessing seedling about 25 years ago. I remember it being more like a foot tall, rather than 2 feet, and it looked like a stick. I don't even recall any roots. I dug a little hole, stuck it in the ground and walked away. Now it's maybe 25 feet tall. It harbors a very happy, nearly housebroken squirrel and various birds, including the occasional crow.

"Trees aren't real specific about needing a whole lot of anything," Garrett says. "That's why you see forests as much as you do. There [are] things you can do to make them grow better and survive better. But Mother Nature will take care of her own."

Norma Schell, who lives in Tydings on the Bay near Sandy Point in Anne Arundel County, grew her Wye Oak offspring from an acorn.

"That was back in the days when you could collect the acorns. You couldn't do that for a long time. I brought it home from where the tree was and planted it. And it came up."

How old is it?

"Oh golly. It's maybe 15 years," Schell says. "Mine looks real healthy, and I've kept it trimmed up a little bit but not too much. It made me appreciate my tree all the more when I saw the [Wye Oak] had gone down. Wasn't that horrible what happened to the tree? Oh, that was so sad."

Dr. Pamela Peeke, an internist who teaches at the University of Maryland Medical School, and her husband, Victor, a developer, planted 200 Wye Oak seedlings on their Montgomery County horse farm nine years ago.

"I think we've got about 150 now," says Peeke, who wrote the best-selling Fight Fat After Forty. "We've been sort of nurturing the little cutie pies. It's actually gorgeous. We now have a Wye Oak grove with trees anywhere from 6 feet to 20 feet.

"They happen to like where they're growing, because they're growing like there's no tomorrow," Peeke says, "little happy campers that they are."

Baltimore's most notable Wye Oak offshoot (besides my own) stands at the water's edge at Fort McHenry.

"It was planted in 1976 as a Bicentennial Tree," says Marion John Bedingfield, a technician with the City's Forestry Division who helped compile the 2002 Register of the Baltimore Notable Tree Commission.

Bedingfield says there's a splendid Wye Oak descendant on private property at Roland Avenue and Cold Spring Lane. Nobody knows how many anonymous ones there are in the city, but Bedingfield says there are plenty.

"Oaks are easy to propagate," he says. "Basically all you have to do is put them in soil and let 'em go. They'll grow for you."

Yep. I can attest to that. The only thing I ever did for my Wye was offer it a shot of Miracle-Gro.

The Wye Oak produced acorns only sporadically and inconsistently as it aged. Nevertheless it spawned offspring as prolifically as shad in springtime.

"I know there's bound to be [offspring] in almost every state," says Garrett, the nursery manager. "I can't remember ever shipping any to Hawaii. I know we shipped them to Alaska."

"I've had calls this week from people telling me how well theirs are doing," he says. "I've got people sending me photos of ones they got years ago. One lady even offered to let us come dig up her tree. She said it was 29 inches around on the bole. I said, 'No, I don't think so.'"

"Wye Oak seedlings have been immensely popular," Garrett says. "Especially as Marylanders move to other areas. This is a way they can take a hunk of Maryland with them ... They want to have a Wye Oak to plant where they move to."

The last big year for Wye Oak seedlings was 1992, when the nursery produced 12,000.

"People bought them for Christmas gifts," Garrett says. "The phones went absolutely nuts. We had three phone lines in that office. As soon as you hung up, it rang again with somebody buying a Wye Oak."

The seedlings even went overseas, Garrett says. "We've got two in France that I know of. They're at a memorial park for World War II veterans."

A storm a few years ago tore through the trees there, he says, so last spring the state nursery shipped two Wye Oak seedlings to re-establish that park.

"They must have lived because they didn't call asking for other ones."

Maybe I'll tack a little plaque on my tree: Planted by Carl Schoettler. That would be a fine memorial. And I'm pretty sure the tree will outlast me.

Sun news researcher Shelia Jackson contributed to this article.