Jeff Gillman - How Trees Die: The Past, Present, and Future of our Forests

THE book you now hold in your hands was made from trees, but like cows raised for their meat, these trees never had a chance to reach old age. Instead, the long arm of human civilization reached out and touched them, forever changing our forests. Trees live and die at our hands. Whether felled intentionally or accidentally, most of us are aware that our trees and forests dont exist the way they once did. Exactly what has changed and how these changes have come about, however, isnt always clear.

Todays trees meet their ends after being bred, raised, and harvested like domesticated cattle. Or perhaps they perish from the onslaught of a foreign insect or disease carried by humans accidentally, or intentionally, across the ocean to our shores. Todays trees may even die from overindulgence: planted and showered with so much love and affection that they literally wilt before our eyes. Being quiet and unassuming, trees never complain about their fate. They dont scream, bleat, or whinny in protest, and this can lead us to forget that they are living and functioningbeings deserving of our respect. As you will see, sometimes humans actions are good for trees, and sometimes theyre bad. My goal in this book is to show what we do to trees while they are alive, and what ultimately leads to their deaths; nothing more and nothing less. From that I hope you will draw your own conclusions about the way we treat our trees and forests.

This book about the ultimate fate of trees leads off with the story of my favorite tree. It wasnt the biggest tree, or the oldest, or the grandest, but instead, the tree whose unassuming life first made me aware of the intimate role that humans play in the lives of these plants. A tree I never knew I cared so much about until it was gone.

IN a small town in Massachusetts, a little south and west of Boston and a little north and east of Rhode Island, a house sits on a lot that looks very similar to the other lots around it. But under its grassy surface lie the decaying roots of a magnificent tree. There is nothing left above ground, but in my memory this tree was the greatest climbing tree ever.

When my uncle Edward was in the fifth grade, late in 1957, a tallish whip of a tree was planted in the front yard by his father, my grandfather. Under normal circumstances the planting of this single tree wouldnt have been memorable to my uncle, or to anyone for that matter, but for the actions of my great-uncle Tom, my grandfathers older brother, whom I remember best as an old, pale, thin man with prominent purple veins on the sides of his nose. It seems that on this particular day Tom was coming over to drop off Christmas gifts. Some of these gifts were unwieldy to carry, and so Tom decided to drive over a grassypatch to park closer to the house. Tom wasnt exactly bumbling; still, he was not the sort of person that youd want driving unsupervised through your yard. But on this particular day that is exactly what Tom did, and, upon leaving, he backed his brand-new 57 Ford Fairlane 500 right over this young tree, breaking off the top.

Throughout his life, my grandfather made a practice of caring for small things. He was the type of man who would sit like a statue for hours holding seed in his hand until birds came to feed; who would bring a nest of motherless raccoons into his house to raise and later release in the woods a few miles away. So it isnt surprising that he was upset when his tree was injured. I can only imagine the words that he must have spouted to and about Tom after the incident. (Knowing my grandfather, these rants probably lasted for years. Along with his good qualities he was known to have a bit of a temper and could hold a grudge.) Certainly my uncle Edward remembers them. Theyre the reason that he knows when the tree was planted. It also isnt surprising that, despite his words to the contrary, my grandfather let the tree remain in its spot instead of removing it and replanting a stronger, uninjured tree. Staking the tree and encouraging it to flourish despite its injury would have been his way. As a horticulturist I would have encouraged him to remove the tree and replant, but as his grandson I know that he couldnt.

With proper care the tree flourished, but it was a tree with many tightly clustered low branches, as a tree that has been broken off at the top tends to be if not carefully readjusted. The trunk of the tree split into three main limbs about four feet off the ground. This configuration isnt good for a tree intended for a boulevard, or for most yards, as the branches can get in the way when trying to mow the lawn, but it makes a perfect climbingtree. Growing up, my brother and I climbed this tree every chance we got, though opportunities did not often present themselves as we lived over three hundred miles away in Pennsylvania. Perhaps the infrequency of our visits causes this tree to stand out in my memory while others fade. Even today I can remember the structure of the canopy, the angle of the limbs, and even the shape of the leaves and so identify it as a maple, most probably a sugar maple. My brother and I named every branch and set of branches that we could reach: the Spiral Staircase, the Birds Nest, the Fork, and the Main Branch, the easiest branch to use to get into the lower limbs. Part of the greatness of this tree was how easy it was to get very high. In its branches we constructed forts, played cowboys and Indians, and hid from our parents. Ricky and Tommy, my grandparents young neighbors, would come to play when we visited, and even when we didnt. Tommy broke his arm falling from the Birds Nest once when we werent there. Im a little ashamed to say that one of the first thoughts that flashed through my mind when I found out was that it served him right, climbing our tree without us.