Crying moose tears
Why moose tears? Because I just noticed I have dying White Ash trees on my property.
I live in Thetford, and have managed and harvested my forest for more than 40 years. I have harvested many of my Ash trees for firewood. The trees are straight, easy to split and burn hot.
The Ash Family is extremely valuable as a wood resource; baseball bats, cabinetry, and flooring. They are also used in canoe making, wooden snowshoes, and baskets. It is a strong wood, and because of its linear grain, bends readily.
Ashes are a straight growing tree with diamond fissured bark, with compound leaves and opposite branching twigs/ branches.
I am lost for words over my grief that another one of our native tree species is being decimated. Even the Black and Green Ashes are susceptible. The trees are dying in Canada and all over the US, 38 states have reported infected trees. They will go the way of the American Chestnut, American Elm, the Am. Beech, Butternut … gack.
There are around 150 million Ash trees, or 5+% of all trees in Vermont, similarly in New Hampshire. Ashes can be found along our roads, in our villages and town parks, our yards. They are a prominent landscape feature.
My Emerald Ash Borer infected trees show a scruffy tan bark, with dead twigs and branches. My drive from Union Village to Norwich is marked with blue X’s, these are all Ashes, presumably marked for removal by the Town.
I am not a forester, but I have planted an arboretum at my homestead; that being said, a third of my forest is White Ash, with a few Black ashes mixed in. I am not sure what we as a nation can do to stop or reverse the decline, but I am savoring my healthy trees and lamenting the passing of the compromised ones.