Plant a tree posted 9/2/2009 10:10:40 AM | 0 kudos what's this?     report abuse

thenewguy295

I was hiking yesterday and crunched a ton of freshly dropped acorns. It's getting to be that time of year again when many trees will be dropping their seeds. Today I'm gonna scoop up a couple of handfuls to start and plant at my brother's and friend's places.

The walnut trees have also been dropping their bounty and you can eat those as well as plant a few. For that matter you can eat acorns if you know how to flush out the tannins and make them into flour and a lot of trees and plants have a food crop that's about ready to harvest.

For some reason I always think of the maples as dropping their helicopter seeds in the spring, I don't see any pods on the trees right now, but if I'm wrong I'll pick up as many of those as I can this year. They grow like weeds and much faster than oak and walnut trees do. Good 'cover' trees to let the slower growing ones get started with a little protection from winds and hot sun. I also have a boxelder I'm keeping an eye on, some plum trees and a seedling whitepine that has sprouted under an old spruce. Once it's big enough it'll get moved 'up north' where it will have a chance to grow big.

Even if I didn't have a place where I could plant them, a lot of trees look nice in a home or apartment in a small container until a place for them presents itself. Chances are you have a friend or know of a park where they would be glad to plant a tree if you offered.

One of my biggest treats is a hike in the woods and what really makes me mad is to hike through an area that was logged a hundred or more years ago and nobody bothered to replant trees there. Heck they did that (reseeding)in the 60s at one of the places I go to and you wouldn't know to look at it now that it was open land then. The CCC did that in the 30s and those are all maturing nicely although sometimes they only planted one species of tree. Some of the east coast states were logged 3 or 4 hundred years ago and many of those areas have recovered into lush mature forests, so it can be done.

A very cool thing is to hike someplace where the trees are fairly young and come across an old survivor. Often these are old oaks or other hardwoods that once were part of a fence line. I happened across one like this last week, the leaves, from what I could see 40 feet above, looked to be maple but it was a massive thing, over 100 feet tall and would have taken 3 or 4 people to get our arms around it. The bark was also smoother and scalier than any maple I've seen before so maybe it's just what happens to really old maples or it's a close relative. I also came across a couple of old oaks in a state park. I know that this was old farmland that has been allowed to revert to a natural forest, (maybe it had some help) but the younger trees are all under 40 years old, these oaks were probably 300+ and there were old rotting 2x4s nailed to one, the remains of some old tree fort or hunters blind. In situations like that it's easy to imagine that the gnarly old apple trees one comes across are remnants of an Indian orchard. There are places where Indian trails are still visible.

One of the remarkable things I have heard about trees is the 'dwarf' trees that will grow in the shadows underneath the towering mature trees. Though only 3 or 4 feet tall these 'dwarves' may be 100 years old and slowly build up their root systems until the day that big old tree above them comes crashing down. Then in a growth frenzy they will compete with each other to take the place of the fallen giant. The hole in the forest gets filled quickly.

Sometimes a cedar will get knocked over by the wind, they often grow on wet ground and have shallow roots. Some of the branches will feed off the mother tree and become trees themselves. Sometimes you can see a line of 5 or 6 maturing cedars that did this and the mother tree long rotted away.

Anyhow they say you can plant trees in any month ending in 'R' and this being september and all and a lot of hunters will be getting out into the woods in october or november it might be a good chance for you or them to plant a few trees in your favorite spot.



Now if you'll excuse me I have a hike to go on. Believe it or not, around the sewage treatment plant, a lot of woods there and nobody visits for some reason, lol.

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Blogs by thenewguy295: These things I believe* Time to change the voting laws and other rights... The run-on sentence The Murder of Ted Kennedy Did Indians even have shields? Natural capitalism vs unnatural socialism What is the condition of your underpants? It's that time of year again I DON'T HAVE HERPES!!!! A third summer without AC What EXACTLY is the Obama / National** health care plan???? Plant a tree Collective rights theory Hilarious The fear of poop U.S. military to replace all communications with twitter 230 MPG Chevy, way to go GM! An apology to all. Common sense, let someone else do it. Skunks The ability to do something Psychic matchdoctor blog Heroes, villains and the unnoticed.. 90% of Mexico's guns come from the U.S. Another salute to the greatest generation.