Plant Trees this spring!!!  I'm not sure what the exact figure is, but I think
it             it's like 75 lbs SO2 (Sulfur Dioxide) per evergreen a year, can
you Imagine (those thinking of the John Lenon song please join hippie now!)
what  effect that would have on the environment!  So this spring be a good
little environmentalist and plant a tree, cuase we need 'em!

74 responses total.

Great, and Amen! Plant those trees!
                                                        ;-)

Planting trees is not only beneficial to the Environment, it can be loads of
fun!  By planting a tree, you are leaving behind a legacy which will last many
years (species dependent) and which will benefit hundreds, perhaps thousands of
creatures in the long run (this means Humans, too!
        My thanks to anyone who has ever planted a tree.  We need more people
like you!

Does the MIchigan DNR still give away free tree seedlings in the
spring? They (or the USDA) used to. We've now planted five of the
trees growing on our lot. Two of them are spruces that we bought
as christmas trees (before we got an artificial one....), so they
have other associations. 

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We planted a dwarf red maple tree in our front lawn this year.

I'm going to plant a horse chestnut tree over my horse, as soon as I can
find one (a tree, not a horse).

We have a tradition in our family which is kind of sad yet kind of
heartening.  We plant a tree (usually a fruit tree) in memory of
any friends of relatives who have passed on.  It is kind of neat
to nourish it and watch it grow and teaches our children to remember
deceased loved ones with thoughtfulness and humor.  It especially
helped my daughter last year when a loved classmate died unexpectedly.
We have an apricot tree in his memory and Jenny nourishes it.

Wow.  That seems like a really good idea.  

I planted a soft maple seedling that I got from the gutter of my 
house a few years ago.  It's now about three stories tall!  Trees 
are a really neat thing to watch grow.

Is that a "water maple", also called I think a box elder? They grow like
weeds. Which are the good tree nursries around AA? We had a tart cherry
tree which died of old age, and we'd like to replace it (happy memories
of all those cherry pies and tarts....).

Wow! that sounds good! But we do not find many maple or oak trees in the
tropical
climate we live. We have a good variety of trees in the outskirts of the
city.(Oh, BTW I'm from Bangalore, India). But I often worry about the trees
in the heart of the city. Environmentalists may plant them, but the trees have
to undergo nothing less than torture facing all the automobile exhausts. And
with the ever increasing real-estate crunch, it's really a wonder tha they
survive at all!

All I know about are temperate trees, but sopme of them can survive and 
thrive in cities.  In Michigan we have Black Pine <soil compation
doesnt seem to bother it>  and Thornless Honeylocust <nothing 
seems to bother this tree>.  Most of the trees you find in a city
thrive on disturbance, and that is what a city is  :)

Welcome to Grex, leonardo. You must like trees, if this is the cf you've
come to first! I don't know about tropical trees (except the wood from
them - mahogany, teak, ebony, etc). There are, as val says, many pollution
resistant trees. There's one that grows like a weed in New York City,
called alanthah, or something like that - also called "the tree of life"
because it grows anywhere (in temperate climes). I've read about the
serious deforestation problem in rural India, but isn't there a
reforestation effort going on now? 

Alanthius!!  The Weed of heaven.  You can find that tree anywhere.
It grows in sidewalk cracks, next to buildings, in any space that 
there is enough soild for it to root.  :)  I think that its an 
invasive species from China.

It was the tree of "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn". I finally found it
in my Garden Encyclopedia as Ailanthus - the "Tree of Heaven": well,
we were both close, val! Yes, it is Asiatic - does it grow in India?

Hello All, and yes, rcurl, I'm new to Grex and this my first conf.
Well, I've not heard of Alanthius, but have probably seen it, 'cause thare
are many flora growing in the sidewalks. Dunno what it is called in India.
And yes, there is a growing concern about the environment these days... and
the lush evergreens may just survive ! 
But however tough a tree may be, can it survive exhausts of lead, sulphur...
I think caring for trees should develop from the individual level; and the
idea practised by suzan (did i get it right?), of associating trees with
people we love is a real good one, but sad all the same.

The only prblem with Ailanthus, is that it has very weak wood,
and tends to bread or topple over in high winds  or during storms  :)

MOre info: Ailanthus is the latin genus name, so you should be able
to find the local name from a botanist, Srinath. It is native to China
and Japan. It is a member of the quassia family. Maybe the name in
Hindi (or whatever) sounds like one of those? 

altissima is the species name i beleive  <flashback to woody plants  :) >

My dictionary confirms A. altissima as the scientific name for 
"Tree of Heaven".

sidelight (possibly of interest): 
There is even a certain green silkworm, Samia walkeri, which is called
the "ailanthus silkworm", imported from China to the US, which feeds on
the leaves of the ailanthus.

That seems to be a lot of information. Wow! 
Yesterday, I was browsing through an encyclopedia and found it! It was
very enlightening to say the least. I've seen another variety of weed growing
almost 
everywhere. Came to know it was calles Oxalis or The Rider. It seems to
florish especially during the monsoon here. But I also heard that it can
colder regions as well. Anybody for more info on that?

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By the way, if anyone wants 10 free trees to plant, the Arbor Day Foundation
will send them to you  - They will send you :
2 white dogwoods, 2 american redbuds, 2 flowering crabapples, 2 washington
hawthorns and 2 golden raintrees.
You have to become a member - that's  $10.
Their address is 100 Arbor Avenue , Nebraska City, NE 68410
.\

Hmmm... after losing 3-4 trees to the ice storm, and more yet to die for
esthetic reasons. I will be planting some trees this year.

Also, the county gives away free bare-root trees (oaks, maples, etc) at some
point during the year.  I'll keep an eye open for the announcement, but I
think it may be in the fall.  

Lord, what would I do with ten trees on a 75 foot by 30 foot backyard?
I have the biggest yard in the neighborhood, but it's still rather
small.  I am thinking about getting ONE dogwood and maybe ONE
japanese cutleaf maple, and perhaps a couple of shrubs.

Depends on how much sunlight you like.  I like the overgrown look, although
my yard was a bit out of control by the time I bought it.

Well, I want to keep lots of sun for vegetables and perennials.  If
I had a really huge estate, I could see making part of it a woody
area, but not in such a small yard.

Well I will be getting 10 trees and I dont have room for all of them.
So I will be giving some of these away.
Hmm, got another flyer from the National Arbor Day Foundation.
They are bow giving away 10 free Colorado Blue Spruces.
All complete with their calendar, a Tree Book with care and planting 
instructions etc .
Their address : National Arbor Day Foundation
211 N. 12th Street , Lincoln, NE 68508

I am losing a Spruce tree that's about 20 feet tall. It's growing at the end
of a cedar screen. We asked a pro what to do about it, as it is only partially
uprooted. He said if he tried to straighten it it would die. So this tree is
clearly moribund. I am trying to decide what to plan there when it goes. Maybe
I'll just extend the cedar screen. I have really nice red cedars there.

My favorite spruse is a blue spruce in front of my house. It is doing fine.

Well, of the 10 trees I planted, maybe half seem to have thrived - but
they are pretty small. I think the dogwoods fared the best.
It will take them  a decade or two to become big trees.
(Also planted Forsythias next to them)

Greenhouse Plants? Vegetation may produce methane
Sid Perkins
Lab tests suggest that a wide variety of plants may routinely do 
something that scientists had previously thought impossible produce 
methane in significant quantities.
Methane, like carbon dioxide, traps heat in Earth's atmosphere. 
Scientists have been studying natural sources of methane for decades 
but hadn't pegged plants as a producer, notes Frank Keppler, a 
geochemist at the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics in 
Heidelberg, Germany. Previously recognized sources of methane include 
bacterial action in the digestive systems of ruminants such as cows and 
in the saturated soils of swamps and rice paddies. 
Now, Keppler and his colleagues find that plants, from grasses to 
trees, may also be sources of the greenhouse gas. "This is really 
surprising," Keppler says, because most scientists assumed that methane 
production requires an oxygenfree environment. 
In its experiments, Keppler's team scrutinized the gaseous emissions of 
a variety of plants and their debris at normal atmospheric oxygen 
concentrations. A gram of dried plant material, such as fallen leaves, 
released up to 3 nanograms of methane per hour when the temperature was 
about 30 C. Each 10 C rise above that temperature, up to 70 C, caused 
the emission rate to approximately double. 
Living plants growing at their normal temperatures generated even 
larger quantities of methane, as much as 370 ng per gram of plant 
tissue per hour. Methane emission more than tripled when the plants, 
either living or dead, were exposed to sunlight. 
The team's experiments took place in sealed chambers with a well-
oxygenated atmosphere, so it's unlikely that bacteria that thrive 
without oxygen generated the methane, says Keppler. Experiments on 
plants that were grown in water rather than in soil also resulted in 
methane emissions, another strong sign that the gas came from the 
plants and not soil microbes. 
From their data, the researchers estimate that the world's plants 
generate more than 150 million metric tons of methane each year, or 
about 20 percent of what typically enters the atmosphere. They report 
their findings in the Jan. 12 Nature. 

I find myself in the process of buying a house.  It has two HUGE
conifers that should probably have the tops chopped off to keep them
clear of power lines.  It also has a Mulberry tree that is too large
and too close to the house, so I plan to murder that and replace it
with something more compact.  Even if a Mulberry /could/ be pollarded,
I think that would have to have been done many years ago.  It's time I
bought a chainsaw.

A hand saw is cheaper, quieter, and safer.  Mulberry wood is very soft.

You might consider renting that chainsaw unless you expect to need it
many times per year.  

Re #33: It's good to hear that Mulberry wood is soft. A hand
   saw might be an option.  I'll have to find some kind of
   industrial-strength ladder too.  I have no idea how to
   tackle the connifers though.

Ask the power company about the conifers.  They might prefer to do their own
trimming, or could advise you if it is needed.

What sort of house are you getting?

A three-bedroom one-story brick house.  In Britain it would be called
a bungalow, but here I think they're known as "ranch" houses.  It was
built in the early 1950s and seems in passable condition.  It has a
tiny patch of grass at the front and a small "yard" behind it with a
low chainlink fence at the sides and the massive connifers and a shed
along the back fence.  I'm sure I'll have more gardening questions for
here, and plenty of questions for the DIY conference too.

Does the power line run along the back fence too?  If so, the power company
is probably responsible for any tree trimming there.

Yes, the power lines run along the back fence.  If it turns out that
they are responsible for trimming the trees, I hope that they can find
a way to get up there to do it. Perhaps it's just a question of a long
ladder.

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