A Weekend of Trees

Note: This is a post I wrote in May that I never published, so better late than never!

Cheap trees, a little tree, and a sick tree gobbled up my Memorial Day weekend. Though I had every intention of doing absolutely nothing during my weekend, I couldn’t help but get involved with these trees. Plus I had never really conducted research on tree maladies, and I found the reading engrossing. While I wasn’t in the yard dealing with trees, I was on the computer reading about trees. The unexpected weekend tree activities proved to be entertaining.

This tiny bald cypress tree looks like something out of a Dr. Seuss book.

It all started when Mom mentioned that Wal-Mart had two young, pathetic-looking bald cypress trees for less than $5 each. She knew it would play on my emotions. I love bald cypress trees. I have loved them ever since I fell under the spell of a tree on my grad school’s campus. That tree looked like something straight out of The Hobbit, and I knew I wanted that kind of tree in my life. My Mom gave me my first bald cypress as a gift for my 40th birthday (along with a Japanese Maple). Both trees were fairly mature and professionally planted. I just couldn’t leave those young, gangly bald cypress trees at Wal-Mart. A lot folks wouldn’t know that they’ll grow up to be wonderful trees in the landscape. My husband scoffed about adding more trees to our heavily wooded yard, but after seeing them, he agreed that these Charlie Brown Christmas trees needed some love. I brought them home and planted them in my back yard. They look precious springing out of the ground like Dr. Seuss trees.

Later I wandered over to Mom and Dad’s house where Mom was pulling weeds in a flower bed. She told me to look on the step at the gift she’d found for me. It was a small flower pot with a tiny Japanese Maple in it. When I say tiny, I mean itty bitty. This tiny tree is less than 6 inches tall. It’s a tiny seedling that Mom found growing in her flower bed. Last fall, I put about ten similar seedlings into containers that I hid under my big magnolia tree for winter. I lost all of them in the extremely cold winter. I was crestfallen when I pulled them out into full sunlight this spring to find no signs of life in them. I took this little tree gift from Mom and planted it near my screened-in porch. I put bricks around it so that no one would mow over it. I am eager to see if this little tree flourishes.

This Japanese Maple will likely be small for a very long time.

The Red Sunset Maple has crown dieback. Notice how the upper branches do not have leaves.

After taking care of the young trees, I turned to my young but ailing Red Sunset Maple. My Mom gave me this tree as a gift for my birthday, and it commemorates our first spring in our house (2012). It was brought in as a 12ft tree and planted by the nursery. I had no reasons to question how it was treated, but this weekend as I stood there looking at the severe die-back in the crown, I knew the tree would not last much longer. I jumped online and started reading about reasons for die-back. A lot of the materials I found suggested that the main culprit for die-back in a tree that young was being planted too deeply. When the nursery planted it, I noted that it did have a mound of dirt and mulch at the base. I, personally, didn’t plant trees that way, but I figured they knew what they were doing. I went outside and surveyed the tree and noticed that I couldn’t see the root flare. It resembled a utility pole stuck into the ground, no flare anywhere. I started digging for the root flare. I found surface root after surface root wrapped around the trunk. I cut the surface roots away and kept digging. After digging down a good 8 or 9 inches, I found the root flare. I was appalled. I dug out a wide dish at the root crown, cutting away roots above the root flare. My husband had to come out and haul away load of dirt after load of dirt. In the end I performed a crude root crown excavation. I did it all with a garden trowel and gloved hands, and at the end, my husband helped lift out excess dirt with a pick axe and shovel. The recommended method for root crown excavation uses an air spade, but I was a woman on a mission, and I figured that a tree in this kind of decline needed my attention now rather than someone else’s attention later. The next day, I cut out the totally dead parts of the crown. The tree will look weird for a while, but time should heal its wounds if it survives. Time will only tell.

The brown area on the trunk shows how deeply I had to dig to remove strangling roots from above the root flare. The tree was planted about 9 inches too deeply.

By Memorial Day I was exhausted by my tree adventures, but my heart was warm with the thought of young growing trees and healing old wounds. Trees carry such meaning for me and always have. These trees will forever remind me of this weekend in my life. I hope they will grow old with me and outlive me.