The city of Corvallis has surpassed its goal of planting 150 trees for the town's 150th birthday year.

"It looks like we have 175 that have homes and people who are willing to care for them once they are in the ground," said Becky Merja, city forester.

Merja estimated that the city already has more than 12,000 street trees. "We're in the process of doing an inventory," she said.

Park trees also would be included in the study.

Before this year, the city averaged about 40 trees planted every year because it could find caretakers to spend three years watering only that many. Merja hopes that the number will be higher in 2008.

Oregon State University recently contributed 12 trees to the city's effort.

On Wednesday, OSU student and part-time worker Colin Tominey shoveled dirt around the root-ball of a

15-foot linden, then stamped the earth firm.

"That looks really good, actually," he said to co-workers. The crew kept busy that day planting five trees along Arnold Way near 26th Street.

Joseph Majeski, landscape manager for OSU, said an additional 100 trees were planted on campus this year.

The university recently completed an inventory of 5,000 campus trees, which will help with construction and other projects, he said.

Through the early 1900s, graduating classes provided trees as gifts to the school, such as the tulip trees in the Memorial Union Quad, a present from the class of 1914.

"A lot of trees on campus are 100 years old," Majeski said.

Some trees have to be removed from campus every year because of age or disease - just like elsewhere in the city.

"People get upset. They become emotionally attached to the trees," Majeski said. "People in this town care about trees."

Among the notable trees on campus are a 150-year-old Douglas fir in front of Fairbanks Hall, a grove of white oaks up to 300 years old just south of Dryden Hall, and an "Apollo tree" on the east side of Peavy Hall. The latter, a Doug fir, was taken into space for an experiment on sprouting.