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  • From: Marimike6@cs.com
  • To: permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [permaculture] frozen trees
  • Date: Sun, 20 May 2007 14:17:43 EDT

>I was surprised to hear how bad it is for the trees where you are, Lisa--I
wonder if it's becaues your trees were further along when the cold snap hit.
The dogwood and redbud that I have seen look fine; I know the fruit and nut
crop
will be very scarce, but I had gone beyond that to worrying about the trees
themselves dying, and from your note, some have. I have not been out to walk
in
the woods for a good two weeks, and will look for sassafras next time I go.
Japanese maples were among the last to recover here, and a fair number of
them
have now come back, though damaged. But the oaks around here look great from
what I can tell. I do worry about hidden damage and how these trees might
fare
against insects or drought. And how the critters dependent on persimmons and
pawpaws and acorns and such will manage.

Around here not one single native species has died. And I don't recall seeing
any greenhouse or exotic trees that have died. But for a month after the
frost, many species looked dead. It caught them right between first leafing
out
and flowering, depending on species-- a vulnerable moment.

They have natural coping mechanisms for this, apparently. Weather has always
been variable from one year to the next, and I recall when I was a kid (in
the
fifties) it seemed like every other year there would be a devastating late
frost. They all survived.

I always wonder what they did before people were invented. I guess no special
care is required, for a viable inhabitant of Spaceship Earth.

Drought brings out the same mechanisms. We had a bad summer drought four or
five years back. The sassafras went into shock and lost all their leaves
then,
as did a lot of other trees. It stayed dry the rest of the summer, and they
never grew back. Next spring it was as though the episode had never happened.

Expensive ornamentals, of course, were quite another thing. They weren't from
around here, and didn't understand searing summer sun and not a drop of
relief in sight. Now for my ornamentals I grow hardy native species, a.k.a.
weeds.





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