What to Do with a Dead Tree?

Posted on Wednesday, June 23, 2021 · Leave a Comment 

If you are a regular reader of this column, you know that I kill plants (just like you probably do). Houseplants. Annuals Flowers in the ground. And yes, even trees. Although some oaks live 400 years, most plants naturally have a much shorter life span. And although some die due to my negligence, most do not. But I do push the limits of Zone Hardiness, trying plants that rather would winter in Pennsylvania – and occasionally killing them.

 

Pagoda Dogwood berries are loved by birds

I have a native dogwood tree that shows up all over my property. It is called the pagoda dogwood ( Cornus alternifolia) and is one of my favorites. This small tree never gets much taller than 10 feet, has just finished blooming with understated white blossoms, and has blue berries loved by birds in July or August.

 

But it has a short lifespan for a tree: 25 years is a good run for this one, even in the wilds. Fortunately it seeds in, so I always have plenty. When one dies, I can cut it down, thank it, and get rid of it. No mourning.

 

For the last 20 years or more beds I have had a hazelnut tree called Harry Lauder’s walking flower stick (Corylus avellana Contorta ‘Purple Majesty’ ,) in one of my flower beds. This tree is a naturally-occurring freak: its stems twist and turn in unusual ways. Great in winter for its silhouette, mine also had purple leaves and was a great tree. I pruned it to keep it just six feet tall. But last summer it showed signs of distress, and this spring it did not leaf out. It is dead.

 

But because it is striking in profile, I decided not to cut it down. Not yet, anyway. I planted annual vines around its base and I am training them to climb up into the tree. If all goes as planned, in a month or so I will have purple hyacinth beans blooming in the tree.

 

Colorful ribbons decorate this dead tree while vines grow up it

In the meantime, my wife Cindy and I decorated it with colorful strips of cloth. Each is just a couple of inches wide and perhaps a foot long. She attached threads to the top of each so we could tie them on like Christmas ornaments. Even the slightest breeze has them fluttering and twisting. It’s lovely.

 

Although nowadays I buy almost exclusively native plants, last summer I was tempted by a lovely Japanese clethra (Clethra barbinosa), and brought her home. This spring it did not leaf out, a major disappointment. My test for a dead branch is to rub my fingernail on the bark, scraping off the outer layer. If it is alive, it will show some green. But this clethra showed brown everywhere, and I decided it was dead.

 

New growth from the roots may bring this Japanese clethera back to life

As I was lopping off the branches prior to digging it out, I noticed a few leaves growing at the very base of the tree. Life! So I am letting it stay. Unfortunately, I do not know if the tree was grafted onto a different rootstock, which is common in the landscape trade.

 

So, for example, a branch or branches of a Japanese clethra might have been grafted to a summersweet clethra ( Clethra alnifolia). This avoids having to start a new plant from seed and ensures that the new plant has the desirable characteristics of the plant grafted to rootstock. If the rootstock grows, one gets a plant different from the purchased plant.

 

All apples are grafted onto rootstock because the seeds are hybrids and will not breed true. The rootstock used for apples determines the size of the tree. Some will produce miniatures, others full-sized trees. So if your apple is killed by rodents last winter and the roots sent up new shoots, what you get will probably not be interesting to eat. Yes, Johnny Apple Seed traveled around America with a sack of apple seeds, but those apples were for making hard cider, America’s beverage of choice, not for eating apples.

 

If your rose died last winter, you might be able to bring it back to life. Most roses are sold on roots that are different than the flowering portion. You should be able to see a scar, the graft union, on your rose. If the union was planted below the soil line, the rose may sprout from the fancy rose you bought, not the rootstock. So wait and see what happens. By now, this late in the season, a “dead” rose should have sent up shoots if it is going to.

 

This rose grows from roots of a hybrid tea that died. Smaller blooms but nice.

Most plants we grow are vigorous and seem to have an innate “desire” to keep their genetic lines viable. That is why they produce seeds, and many (especially weeds) send out roots that can send up new plants. So if a perennial plant dies, you may be in luck. A baby plant may replace the mother plant. It’s what they do.

 

A few words of warning, however. Any plant that starts from seeds dropped by a hybrid plant will probably not breed true, although it can. A hybrid is a cross between two genetic lines, and seed producers develop them in carefully isolated circumstances to protect their lineage.

 

I like to think that if I never kill any plants, I am not trying hard enough. I try to grow new and different plants, often things that would rather grow a few hundred miles south. When those rare (for here) plants do survive and bloom, I feel like a million bucks. Hopefully they did not cost that much, as I will probably lose them at some point.

 

Henry is the author of 4 gardening books and is a gardening consultant. He lives in Cornish flat, NH. E-mail Henry at henry.homeyer@comcast.net or write him at PO Box 364, Cornish Flat, NH 03746. Please include a SASE if you want a response.

 

Filed under Article · Tagged with Japanes clethera, pagoda dogwood, pruning roses

Planting For the Birds

I’ve never calculated how much I spend each year on bird seed, but it’s considerable. I know people some spend a lot more, who think nothing of buying big bags of 2 or 3 kinds of specialized seeds for the birds every few weeks, and who maintain half a dozen feeders much of the year.

Does Mother Nature buy bags of booty for birds? No. We can reduce our expenditures and help the birds through judicious management of our wild spaces and our gardens. Now is a good time to plant a few things for the birds.

To support birds, it’s important to provide them with food all year, nesting places, and safe places out of the reach of cats, foxes and hawks. Agreed, it is easier to feed black oil sunflower seeds to provide food in winter than to plant trees, but there are trees and shrubs that do provide fall and winter food.

Pagoda Dogwood berries

Shrubs are great for summer and fall treats. Pagoda dogwood (Cornus alternifolia) provides berries that are eaten voraciously in mid-August, but are long gone now. Same for blueberries, which, alas, are enjoyed by the birds as much as they are by us.

Three shrubs that produce fall berries are silky dogwood (Cornus amomum), red osier dogwood (Cornus sericea) and gray dogwood (Cornus racemosa). The first two grow wild in wet areas in part shade to full sun. Gray dogwood appears at the edges of dry forests. All produce berries enjoyed by birds. I went out in early October and found just a few berries left on silky dogwood growing wild near my stream. All have berries from August to October.

For winter food, nuts and cones are the best source of bird food. It’s true that most birds cannot break open a walnut, chestnut or acorn – though I have seen crows feeding on walnuts broken open on the road. But as the winter progresses, nuts soften and the interiors become available to birds. Squirrels are messy eaters, and often leave parts of nuts scattered on the ground and available to birds, too.

Hemlock left, White Pine right

Two of the most popular trees with birds are the white pine and Canadian hemlock. Not only do they provide food – seeds from their cones – they provide shelter and nesting places. The eastern white pine is used by more than 40 species of birds, and Canadian hemlock is used by more than 25 species.

If you are interested in learning more about trees and shrubs used by birds, I highly recommend a book by Richard M. DeGraaf, Trees, Shrubs and Vines for Attracting Birds (University Press of New England, 2^nd edition, paperback at $24.95). This book lists, for each common species of woody plant, the birds that use it, and how they use it.

Is this a good time to plant trees and shrubs? Yes. Actually there are two schools of thought about this. Scientists have determined that trees and shrubs extend their roots in the fall, even after leaf drop. So many plantsmen, myself included, vote for fall planting. Not only are roots going to grow, the climate is usually cooler and wetter, so the chances of drying out are smaller.

The other school of thought maintains that planting in spring is better. They say that so long as you are attentive to your plants, and keep them watered, they have more time to get settled in before the stress of winter. I’m a careful gardener, but a busy person, and I know how easy it is to forget about watering for a week or two – which in august can be deadly. So I say plant now – or in September, but not after early November.

A stream of water is good for loosening roots

I recently went to a gardening workshop where one of the presenters advocated removing much of the soil from perennials purchased in pots before planting. The idea is that plants grown in pots get their roots all snarled up over time, and have roots circling the plants. I have always teased out plant roots with a finger or a tool, but have never used her suggestion – a stream of water.

So recently I tried using the hose to loosen plant roots, and, much to my surprise, it worked very well. I thought I’d be holding a handful of mud and a disintegrating root ball, but it worked fine. So next time I plant a tree or shrub, I shall try using a sharp stream of water to wash away some of the soil and to allow me to tease out the roots more easily – without breaking them.

But back to the birds. Here is a list of plants that DeGraaf’s book list as helping 20 or more species of birds: balsam fir, sugar maple, serviceberry (Amelanchier spp.), birches, flowering dogwood (Cornus florida), beech, Eastern red cedar, apples and crabapples, red mulberry, black tupelo, spruces, pitch pine, cherries of all kinds, oaks and American elm. That list includes some Zone 5 and 6 trees, so not all are appropriate everywhere.

Of the shrubs, here are some of the best: dogwoods of all kinds, hawthorn, huckleberry, bayberry, staghorn sumac, roses, brambles of all sorts, elders and blueberries. Common grapevine is also highly useful for birds.

It’s true most of us do not have garden space for more big trees, but there is always space for a few more shrubs along the edges of our space. So get out your shovel and get to work!

You may reach Henry by e-mail at henry.homeyer@comcast.net. Read Henry’s regular blogs at https://dailyuv.com/gardeningguy.

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