Nature Connection: Plant A Tree

It’s easy to take trees for granted. We see them every day. There are tall trees, short trees, and trees that sprawl and spread. Some are deciduous, dropping their leaves in fall and growing new ones in spring, while others are evergreen, keeping their green leaves or needles all year long.

We get a lot of our necessary oxygen from plants, especially trees. The rest comes from phytoplankton which lives in water. This is a simplistic explanation, but hopefully you catch my drift, or leaf, as it were.

Over the many years humans have been on the earth, we have used trees for many things. We have built homes, ships, furniture and fences. We’ve also used wood products and pulp to make paper, cardboard and other useful items. This means we have cut down millions of trees, and the cutting and using continues around the world even as you read this.

Trees offer many things to many organisms. They weren’t put here just for humans to take advantage of. In fact, most of the multitudes of other users leave the trees more or less intact. Even those animals that cut down trees, such as beavers, leave a stump that can regrow.

Trees supply animals and birds of all sizes and shapes with food and shelter. Some use only the bark while others drill holes for nesting. Some feed on the leaves and some feed on the sap. There are outliers, of course, especially invasive insects whose larvae can kill or weaken a tree beyond recovery.

Even when dead, trees fall to the ground and still supply food and shelter for thousands of tiny organisms. Eventually the tree will decompose and become part of the forest floor, adding nutrition and more to the forest or field it fell in. Some will send up shoots that become new trees even as they are dying.

We have lost several mature trees in our yard over the 40 years we’ve been in our home. Some were old and diseased, while others interfered with power lines as they grew and were cut and maimed in favor of continuous power to our neighborhood. It is always sad to lose a tree, but the maples and oaks we lost dried in pieces in neat piles in our backyard and eventually warmed us in our fireplace, the ashes spread on the gardens. While piled, they hosted all sorts of little critters, including the garter snakes that call our yard home.

We’ve planted some new trees, but mostly the birds have planted various wild cherry trees and a few maples among other things like privet and bittersweet. Apparently, birds don’t discriminate against invasive plants. They like poison ivy, too, and have recently added that to our yard.

Our town has a program that is planting trees in Hyannis. When I was a kid Hyannis was much greener than it is now, but we still have some good trees in town that have a little age and attitude. A few streets were once lined with elms, which succumbed to the elm disease that devastated so many elms years ago. Newer trees are finally reaching good heights in those areas, but I’m not sure we will ever have the tree-lined streets I grew up with, at least in my lifetime. I digress. We signed up for a free tree, a white oak in our case. White oaks are native, and nature loves them so it will be a great addition to our yard. We may also add a red cedar and native maple.

Planting for pollinators is great, but flower gardens are only part of the story. Many kinds of insect larvae depend on our native oaks especially, so if you are thinking of adding a useful and beneficial tree, perhaps consider an oak.

There’s a saying that planting a tree is a gift to future generations. In our case we may not live long enough to see our new trees reach maturity, but that’s OK. Someday perhaps a young person will sit under the tree and be thankful for its shade. A robin may build her nest, and a downy woodpecker may feed on insects in the bark. Squirrels will enjoy the acorns and so will the blue jays.

If the news is getting you down, get outside and spend some time with a tree, or better yet, lots of trees. Some like to jeer and call environmentalists tree huggers, but did you know that hugging a tree is actually good for your health? It’s calming and can help even out your energy. Try it.

You don’t need to go buy a fancy tree. Collect some acorns, or maple seeds, or other tree seeds this fall and plant a few. If busy squirrels bother you, plant your acorn or seed in a pot and cover with screening to protect it. As it grows, protect it with a little fence until it is big enough to hold its own. Lots of animals like to chow down on baby trees, so protection is necessary if you’re not planting a forest. In the forest a bit of natural attrition is expected.

Think local and native and check with your town to see if they have any planting projects you can benefit from. A tree offers many things, but perhaps most importantly, a tree offers hope, and we need a lot of that these days.