Recipe For An Eyesore

RECIPE FOR AN EYESORE

Wednesday, April 25, 2007 (Napanee Beaver)

Friday, April 27, 2007 (Picton Gazette)

An article that appeared in a recent issue of the Brighton Ensign by author Marg Flemming, cautioned gardeners this spring about pruning trees and shrubs too early. When sap begins to flow in February, she says, signalling the start of the maple syrup season, it also marks the end of our opportunity to prune certain trees and shrubs.

She referred to some trees such as maples, elms and dogwoods, as “bleeders,” because these trees have a strong tendency to leak sap from pruning wounds. As the sap travels up and down the tree in its traditional fashion before the tree is in full foliage, the sap will leave the tree by the severed stubs. This she says, is normally not a problem during maple syrup time when taps are inserted into the trunks of trees, as the amount of sap leaving the tree is inconsequential; however, when gaping wounds appear, this becomes an instant recipe for the growth of pathogenic fungus to become established.

This has always been common knowledge, even to someone with little gardening experience. Pruning, therefore, must be done either after the leaves have formed in the spring, or preferably in the late fall once the sap has become immobile for the winter and unlikely to flow from wounds. While the tree is unlikely to die from occasional light pruning at the wrong time of the year by this bleeding, severe cutback can easily result in the death of the tree.

Coincidentally, during the same period this article appeared in the Brighton newspaper, and on other Internet sites, and gardening columnists all over were stressing the same advice, “bush hogs” along some of our major highways were busy mangling trees. The Bush Hog name is actually a misnomer, and has suffered under the same unfortunate misuse as has the name Skidoo through the years. Industrial rotary mowers are manufactured by a number of companies, including Bush Hog. In recent years, they have been modified to maintain road allowances along highways and secondary roads, and are more accurately known as boom mowers. When used as a mower it does an admirable job of cutting grass, thick brush and small trees that may be encroaching the highway.

The machine’s excellent points were certainly offset by its modification to be hydraulically lifted vertically and used on offending overhanging branches. Because the overhanging branches have no stability, they are unceremoniously shattered, torn, stripped and hacked into a mangled mess. In some cases, these branches of mature trees, some of them several inches in thickness are mangled due to some mythical menace many metres in off the highway.

However, it isn’t only in eastern Ontario where this machine has destroyed the very roadside beauty that many municipalities are trying to promote to encourage tourism in their areas. Letters to the editor in a Greensboro, North Carolina newspaper last month were not very charitable in their comments about the ability of this machine to flail branches from high trees. While little was said against the machine’s ability to keep roadside brush from the shoulders of highways, it was a different matter when the hydraulics came into play, and the machine stood erect with it powerful blades grinding into the sides of trees. “It makes me sad, embarrassed and angry,” writes one irate North Carolina observer, “that there is so little regard for trees, which make up so much of the natural beauty along our roadsides.”

It seems peculiar that in some areas, even along the same major highway sometimes, ornamental trees are planted to enhance roadside beauty, while just down the highway, a fence to fence clearance policy is employed at any expense. As many trees succumb to their injuries and others remain shattered and skeletal remains of themselves, it likely isn’t the most endearing welcome that tourists have to eastern Ontario when they arrive. We can’t criticize efforts, of course, to maintain roadsides in an effort to improve visibility to motorists, but one has to wonder if the mangling we see along so many of our highways isn’t just the result of an over zealous operator wanting to see how much thickness he can successfully penetrate and how far the severed limbs will fly.

One is tempted to ask which is the lesser of two evils, the blackened waste from toxic brush sprays that were traditionally used to control roadside growth in the 1960s, or the mangled mess we see today under the guise of roadside management. Moreover, is it necessary that we be forced to choose between such extremes? Surely there must be a compromise where encroaching brush and tall grass may still be cut, and overhanging branches and trees several metres off the highway can continue to provide something more interesting than shattered skeletons.