Trees Old and New

When we arrived here 54 years ago, the land was heavily forested but with a limited pallet of northern conifers and deciduous trees. In the first category were pines both red and white, three kinds of spruce, balsam fir, larch and hemlock. Among the hardwoods were sugar maples and red maples, ash, beech, red oak, black cherry, white, yellow and gray birch, quaking and big tooth aspen, and alas butternut and elms, which have both now succumbed to plagues. Common in the area but absent from our particular property were red cedar, cottonwood, basswood, walnut, and black locust. In the 70s of the last millennium, I planted cedars and cottonwoods;  they are now mature and replicating themselves. The walnut that I planted fifteen years ago is now 25 feet tall and very handsome. I have only one basswood, which I found as a seedling and transplanted to to a prominent place;  I've been waiting all these years for its descendants. The black locusts that I grew from seeds harvested in Colorado are now starting to make an impression on the landscape. I've also added some trees that might be able to survive our warmer winters: a hickory (growing very nicely), a swamp white oak, a bur oak (and its lone offspring) and a sycamore (which has survived two winters).  I've also experimented and failed with some trees that grow just a bit south of us: catalpa, horse chestnut, "Crimson King" maple, little-leaved linden, and ginkgo. Perhaps I'll try again now that the weatherh as warmed. One of my neighbors has successfully reared a metasequoia; it's tempting to try but I think on the whole I'd rather stay with north American trees. On the other hand, we'll need some new trees to take the place of the ash, which are soon to be decimated. 

Comments

[Mary Katharine Wakeman]

Vivian, have you come across FINDING THE MOTHER TREE: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest, 2021, by Suzanne Simard? An engrossing read. Sort of an autobiography, but full of science. She's the one who worked out all the connections underground, that make a forest a dynamic community (written about in the novel OVERSTORY, and books like THE HIDDEN LIFE OF TREES etc.)