The Cupertino Courier
Letters & Opinions
Treacherous trees--some aren't worth saving
By Carol Bogart
OK, before tree huggers have an aneurysm over the column's headline, let me confirm that I, myself, am a tree hugger. As a kid, I was the best tree climber in the neighborhood. Everybody said so. If Mom couldn't find me, she knew to go out in the yard and peer up into the branches of the Granny Smith apple tree.
When Mike, my son, was 4, he crouched beneath a giant old-growth oak next to a Denver drainage ditch, watching intently as I taught him how to tie a hunk of hotdog to a string to cast for crawdads. I have several photos of him standing in the notch of the tree's Y'd trunk.
At our Ohio farm, my favorite tree was a gnarled old sycamore, its thick, humped roots washed bare by the action of the creek. When time allowed I would walk the woods, finally settling into the tree's smooth, wide roots to absorb the water's tranquil sound.
After my parents bought their farm when I was 10, I helped them plant 250 blue spruce seedlings.
In short: I love trees.
What I learned, though, when a forester evaluated the woods at my farm, is that there are trees, and then there are trees.
If a soft tree, such as a cottonwood, falls in the forest and crushes, say, a half-grown hardwood, such as a walnut or an oak--well, that's too bad. If an unhealthy oak splits and falls on a child in a city park, that's a tragedy.
All things being equal, in nature there's a place for sick trees, too. Hollow trunks create homes for everything from raccoons to wood ducks.
But that Y'd oak Mike and I loved so much in Denver was a disaster waiting to happen. The forester told me water collects in the notch, which tends to rot the wood. Such trees are at risk of splitting in half and crushing a house or car or person.
The utility companies' unhappy practice of "topping" trees to make way for, say, power lines weakens the tree, leaving it susceptible to disease and insect infestation, he told me.
Sometimes, he said, cities don't think about a tree's "anchor" roots when putting in sidewalks and curbs. Destabilized, such trees are more likely to fall, and could hurt or kill someone.
When I was thinking of taking one of the fields at my farm out of production and planting trees, the forester shrugged. He said if I just left it alone, in six years, all sorts of trees would start to grow--from seeds carried by the wind, dropped by birds, hidden and forgotten by squirrels and so on.
Unchanneling Stevens Creek to restore its natural flow will certainly enhance habitat for its aquatic population: fish, turtles, snakes, crawdads--which, in turn, support herons, raccoons, eagles and other birds and wildlife. With or without planting acorns to replace oaks that are in the way of the restoration project, as someone once said, "Nature always wins." If you doubt it, just go a season without mowing your lawn.
One day when Mike and I set off for the ditch for an hour or so of crayfish catching, we discovered Denver had lopped off one branch of the Y. The tree now had but a single, misshapen trunk. It looked mutilated. Mike was confused. I cried.
Today, though, now educated by the forester, I understand why Denver did it. I'm thankful the tree's trunk didn't split and fall with my unsuspecting son beneath it.
Cities interested in properly managing city-owned trees can adopt the Arbor Day Foundation's Tree City, USA program. The website is http://www.arborday.org/programs/treeCityUSA.cfm.
To receive a free Tree City USA booklet, call 402.474.5655 or email treecity@arborday.org.
Carol Bogart is the editor of the Cupertino Courier. Contact her at cbogart@community-newspapers.com, or call 408.200.1055.
