BERKELEY -- Since the first buildings went up near Strawberry Creek a century and a half ago, the University of California, Berkeley, campus has been a wooded enclave, marked as much by its many trees as by the buildings that have arisen in a variety of styles.

Weddings are held in Faculty Glade, a stand of eucalyptus at the west end of campus that has long been a meeting place for students. Instructors often hold classes on warm days under the spreading arms of a coast live oak.

But these are tough times for trees on the campus.

Caught in the fallout from the state budget deficit, campus groundskeepers already have laid off temporary workers. There was barely $1,000 a year to replace ailing trees before the present crunch, said campus arborist Richard Trout.

A single, 12-foot replacement tree can cost $800, Trout said. So a $1,000 budget does not go far.

At least 30 trees among Berkeley's more than 2,000 trees and 200 species die every year. With luck, Trout has enough money to replace five. But UC Berkeley faces an estimated $25.4 million deficit this year, and people are losing jobs, cutting hours. Trees are far down on the priority list.

It is time, Trout believes, for the people of the Bay Area and California to come to aid of the trees. Trout and several colleagues who spend their workaday lives tending to the university's wooded heritage have started the Fund for the Trees.

Contributions are welcome.

When a tree in Faculty Glade tumbles, grateful alumni rush to contribute cash to replace it.

But what about the trees on the rest of the campus? Trout's operations manager, Phil Cody, asks that question as his crew climbs high in a century-old Italian stone pine near Chancellor Robert Berdahl's campus residence. They are strengthening cables that keep the tree from collapsing. The huge tree has an 80-foot-wide span of branches.

Campus trees are steeped in history, Trout says, but they tend to be forgotten. The Eucalyptus Grove, a landmark at the west entrance to campus, consists of blue gums planted in 1877. Most people do not realize it, but the grove includes the tallest eucalyptus trees in California, Trout said.

Donations may be made online at colt.berkeley.edu/urelgift/tree.html. Checks (payable to UC Berkeley Tree Fund) can be sent to UC Berkeley Foundation, University Relations, 2440 Bancroft Way No. 2400, University of California, Berkeley 94720-2400.

Other, once prominent trees have died and faded into memory with new trees to take their place. Who remembers a lane of 11 pepper trees that once shaded Morrison Hall. Three remain, he said.

Even the coast live oaks -- trees that live for centuries -- and Bay laurels, which are nearly as old, die. Three live oaks, which lined Strawberry Creek long before there was a university have died recently, Trout notes.

Sudden Oak Death threatens live oaks and Bay laurels and has infected redwoods, buckeyes, maples, manzanitas, huckleberries and rhododendron bushes.

Fact is, neither Trout nor Cody know how many trees still live on campus. The last survey was in 1976. Landscape Architecture Associate Professor John Radke and his students are in the middle of a new survey.

Most of the donated cash will pay for new trees, but a portion will also go for tools and equipment badly need to care for trees on campus, Trout said. Even those ancient blue gums could use a bit of modern technology, such as an air excavator to loosen the soil around the trees and give them breathing room.

"That tool could do the job in a fraction of the time it would take us to do by hand, if we had the people to do it," Trout said.

He sums up his philosophy in a quip made by President John F. Kennedy, when he spoke on campus in 1962: "The great French Marshall Lyautey once asked his gardener to plant a tree. The gardener objected that the tree was slow growing and would not reach maturity for 100 years. The Marshall replied, 'In that case, there is no time to lose, Plant it this afternoon!'"

Donations may be made online at colt.berkeley.edu/urelgift/tree.html. Checks (payable to UC Berkeley Tree Fund) can be sent to UC Berkeley Foundation, University Relations, 2440 Bancroft Way No. 2400, University of California, Berkeley 94720-2400.