So many trees I thought would need to be removed where able to recover. I would observe the trees in the spring and examine the flush of growth and in the summer look for trees that have failed to leaf out or have dying tops. If you do this for a few seasons, you will be able to see what trees are recovering and which ones are bound for the woodpile. Don't be hasty about removing if these trees are a valuable part of your landscape and they aren't a hazard.
At the farm we have a few yard white birch that in the '98 ice storm bent to the ground. But they were not bent down for long. The temp climbed so that the ice melted and they all stood back up. If they are down for an extended period they are less likely to recover. Birch are bad for being bend. We have another birch here, which is grey birch, and that is worst.
It's like over grown alders to me. The development near town here where I'm at now has it all over. Them darn things have knocked the power out here 4 times in less than a year because one bad storm bent them over and it took 3 more storms to finally get those darn things away from the wires. People look at them and see white bark, and think they have white birch, but they are just a nuisance shrub. Pages: [ 1 ] Go Up. Share Topic. Similar Topics. Powered by EzPortal. SMF 2.
The Forestry Forum is sponsored in part by:. Forestry Forum Sponsored by:. Read times 0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic. Logged "Trees live a secret life only revealed to those that climb them" www. Re: White Birch, bent by storms, snow Logged About. Logged Manage 80 acre tree farm in central Missouri and Mesquite timber and about a gozillion saguaros in Arizona.
Those road and field edge trees, in their quest for light are also more apt to have a heavier crown, i. When those ice events happen, they are then more susceptible, creating that sometimes dramatic sight of many bent over trees. Keep in mind that these trees, being hardwoods, have already exercised one of their survival mechanisms earlier in the fall by dropping their leaves in an effort to reduce their liability for this very occurrence and wind damage. It is kind of the risk these hardwoods take by deciding to live in temperate zones.
The coniferous trees have, on the other hand, used their survival card with their conical shape, bendable branches and arrangement of branches and keeping their needles on all year. It all comes down to the choices these trees made evolution-wise. The conifers can hit the ground running in the spring, but risk damage from early frosts, or severe moisture loss in the winter.
The conifers also have the advantage in the winter of grabbing some of that sun when temperatures rise as they still have all their needles and can photosynthesize during the winter. It is amazing how many of the bent over hardwoods pick themselves back up though. In general, if less than 50 percent of the tree is damaged, and they are bent less than a degree angle, the tree has a good chance of survival. I joined in and we spent more of our time freeing birches than walking.
Trees have a hard enough time these days, if you see one struggling with the snow, why not help it out? Susan Pike, a researcher and an environmental sciences and biology teacher at Dover High School, welcomes your ideas for future column topics. She may be reached at spike gmail. Read more of her Nature News columns online at Seacoastonline. Facebook Twitter Email. Nature News: Birches bend, but they don't break.
Our poet, though he likes to imagine and pretend, is nonetheless also a realist; he knows that the birches do not really lean because a boy has been swinging them. The true reason is that the birches are bent down in winter ice storms. An ice storm is a rain that falls into a colder layer of air and freezes on whatever it touches, which in a forested area is trees.
Nonetheless, a good ice storm is a very lovely sight, particularly when the sky clears and the sun shines upon a glittering world. The loosened ice fragments fall and shatter and slide about on the frozen, hard crust of the snow that covers the ground beneath and around the trees. This notion of heaven the sky as a transparent dome is very ancient. They are dragged to the withered bracken by the load, And they seem not to break; though once they are bowed So low for long, they never right themselves:.
Have you noticed how Frost keeps alternating from poetic imagination to factual reality? First he talks of birches bent down by a boy swinging them, then he says that is not the real reason why birches bend; then he goes into another fantasy about the transparent, glassy dome of heaven having fallen, and the shining debris needing to be swept away, and now he is back to talking again about why ice storms make birches lean.
You may see their trunks arching in the woods Years afterwards, trailing their leaves on the ground Like girls on hands and knees that throw their hair Before them over their heads to dry in the sun. Years after the ice storm that has weighed the birch trees down, bending them over toward the ground, one may still see, in spring and summer and autumn, the trunks of the birches bent over in the woods, trailing their leaves on the ground.
And here the poetic fantasy is that the birch trees are like country girls with long hair, who after they have washed it, get down on their hands and knees and throw their long hair over their heads to spread it out and dry it in the warm sunlight. When we say one thing IS another, we are using metaphor. But I was going to say when Truth broke in With all her matter-of-fact about the ice-storm Now am I free to be poetical?
But now he launches into a more detailed description of his poetic fancy that leaning birches are so because a boy has been swinging them:.
I should prefer to have some boy bend them As he went out and in to fetch the cows— Some boy too far from town to learn baseball, Whose only play was what he found himself, Summer or winter, and could play alone.
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