The Hobbit Tree in Sycamore Grove Park

“Teapot view” of Hobbit Tree

The Hobbit Tree is an old sycamore tree in Livermore's Sycamore Grove Park.You can get to the tree by walking for about half a mile from the park's Wetmore Road Entrance on Arroyo del Valle Regional Trail to the trail's junction with Olivina Trail. The Hobbit Tree stands between the trail and the streambed. The site includes two benches.

Doorway and hole of Hobbit Tree

The hollowed-out sycamore houses various creatures. Hobbit-size humans find it easy to walk inside the tree through a narrow doorway or slide down to there through the oval hole. I found myself tall enough to simply look through the hole. Doing this from the Arroyo del Valle side, I got a peekhole view of the grasslands and the hills that backdrop the Olivina Winery ruins—historic structures, but younger than the Hobbit Tree. 

In a recent Bay Nature article, Sylvia V. Linsteadt shares her Hobbit Tree knowledge and discoveries:

I stopped on the Olivina Trail to visit an old sycamore known to park personnel and visitors as “the hobbit tree.” It's not hard to see why—from the outside, the tree resembles a fantastical teapot with a window, and what's more, it's partially hollow, with an arching doorway that opens into the tree's interior. Someone placed a stump just inside, and I sat there for a long time, looking up into the sycamore's hollow trunk, into darkness, trying to imagine the life of such a tree, roots down in the alluvial gravel of the old Arroyo del Valle, tall branches clattering in the breeze and home to countless birds, insects, and mammals. 

Reference and more about Sycamore Grove Park

Sylvia V. Linsteadt: Western sycamores speak of an older California. Bay Nature Oct. - Dec. 2017, 16-20+52.  Link: baynature.org/article/western-sycamores-speak-older-california.