 Well, welcome. I'm thrilled to see this size of this crowd and the interest that I've been hearing already. So thanks for spending part of this terribly horrible day here. Yeah. We'll get out in time. You can still enjoy some sunshine if it's still sunny. It was a good introduction, particularly in that I know many of you. I recognize many of you. I know some of you. I can remember far fewer names than there are in here. And that's sort of the approach I want to take today, is that this is not about tree identification. Is anybody depressed about that? There are, however, some great books that, one in particular, and if you didn't get there is a handout here, which if we run out, we can get some more, but the book on identifying trees that I would point you to is Recognizing Trees of the Northeast. It's a fabulous little book, not complicated, doesn't try and cover every single tree in the world. That's the best part. Anyway, I don't remember the names of trees a lot of times either, but I know trees really well and love them dearly, have for a long time. And so let's talk about trees. Can you hit that light again, Allison? Thank you. So we live in this amazing place surrounded now by trees when Vermont was first invaded by non-natives, the forest covered about 100% of the land. Within a few years, literally a few years, it dropped down to 50% of the land, but we are now back up to about 80% is covered by trees. And when I stand in a forest like this, I just have to wonder what is it like to be a tree? And also, there I am amidst living things, and just like me, they are living things. And yet, do I understand them? Not so well. Here we were in the 1870s. We'd already scalped all of the hillside. Things had changed dramatically. We know that farms came, land all the way up and down the river banks were cut. And so the waters that had been held in place by the forest and beavers, all of a sudden we had floods every year here in Montpelier and throughout the rest of Montpelier. So this is where we are now. It's a magnificent place to live. Liz and I have been here for over 40 years now. I love walking in Hubbard Park, and it's partly because of the peace of the trees. Downtown, a different story. We got a lot of pavement, a lot of traffic. We struggle to get trees downtown. These two trees that you see here are ash trees. They were planted in 1976 by centennial trees. And how they lived is beyond me, but they did. And they're clearly still enjoyed. This one on the corner is a newer tree, but a lot of shade. This is the tree board, and I can't figure out how to stop this, so I'm going to wiggle back and forth a little bit. This is the tree board, and we just, Abby Callahan is the person who helps us proclaim that we're Tree City USA, and we just got noticed yesterday that we are for the 21st year in a row. And what that means is the city commits a certain amount of resources to taking care of their trees, so thank you all for helping that. So there are a lot of trees in Vermont, and we're not going to try and identify every last one. It's a mix of deciduous trees, trees that lose their leaves in the fall, and conifers. And I'm going to focus primarily on deciduous trees, but if you're out and about, there's only four or five conifers that I would encourage you to learn about. This is white pine. They're all really pretty easy to identify, cedar, a northern white cedar, hemlock, and one of my favorites, which does lose its leaves in the fall, tamaract. So I'm going to leave it at that for the conifers, but do take time to really learn more about them. But let's talk about deciduous trees with leaves, because they're so easy to learn who these trees are. This is a ginkgo on Berry Street here. Who has visited the ginkgo on Berry Street? All right, who hasn't? You need to do that. Sumac, more shrubbed than a tree, although we have some along the bike path that are now 30 feet tall, so they can qualify as a small tree. Anybody know this one? No, it is in the Maple family. No? There's a dollar, if you can guess. Sycamore, and the leaves are huge. This was, I think, the one that Adam had, a joke. Thank you. There are some trees that it's easy to get mixed up on. This is cottonwood on the left and aspen on the right, and every year or two I have to pull out my book and re-identify these. So there's no shame in doing that and, meanwhile, you can just enjoy trees wherever they are and however big or small they are. This is a tree from my childhood, sassafras. We don't have any around here, but they're magnificent trees that have three different shapes of leaves on one tree. Yep, they do grow near Lake Champlain. So we can use leaves to identify trees, very easy for the most part. We can also use bark. And again, not even about identifying, but just looking at bark is fascinating to me. What I see here is that there are places in bark where the tree actually breathes through these parts of the bark that open up inside. This is a cherry, a tree that is really valued by a lot of wildlife. Here's another one that doesn't grow right here in central Vermont, but over in Lake Champlain and where I grew up in Michigan, Shagbark Hickory, a fabulous tree. This is ash, white ash. And we'll get into more about ash in a few minutes, but pay your respects while that you can. And here's the sycamore bark, so that great big leaf. This is what the bark looks like. This is crazy. How can a tree have something this gorgeous? We have a few sycamores around here because we planted them. They're not native to Montpelier, but you go down to Rutland and you'll find them native. And then we can identify trees by their shape, or you may be able to. Who knows what this one is? Yeah. So again, who's visited this elm on Court Street? If you have not raised your hand this afternoon, go to Court Street down by the State House End. This is the last big elm in Montpelier. It's magnificent. I'll show you some more pictures of it in a few minutes. About the shape, this is a weeping willow, again not a native tree, but black locusts and good old sugar maple. They're everywhere, but have we stopped to look at their silhouettes this time of year? What's this one? Tamarack. Tamarack or large, yes. How about this one? A tree of my childhood? No, good guess. It's what you can call a bean tree, Catalpa. One of the most widely planted trees in the country because farmers planted them for fence posts. And again, a tree that feeds a lot of other critters. So this is from a friend of mine in Burlington, and I just loved the way he lined up all of these buds. So we can use buds as a means of identifying trees also. It's not easy. Allison. Yep, Allison has pussy willows this morning. Stripe maple, one of the most beautiful little trees you'll ever come across. The buds are harder to identify in my estimation because you've got to get really close. This time of year they're starting to open so they're easier, but it's still a challenge to identify a lot of trees by their buds. But the flowers, that's pretty easy, isn't it? Now I'm not a big fan of these things, but for two weeks every year, I'll put up with them. And then they do feed a lot of birds this time of year also. Crab apple, yeah. This is known as a weed tree. This is a boxelder, but the thing I love about boxelder is they'll grow almost anywhere. For better or worse, right? I brought in some of that this because it's blooming right now in our yard. Witch hazel, a vernal spring witch hazel. It's a beautiful, beautiful, large shrub, not really a full tree. And this is the kitalp of flower. I mean, wait a minute. Wait a minute. Did that come from a flower shop? No, it grows literally like a weed. Tulip poplar. Again, a tree that is not native to Montpelier, but there were two planted on Berry Street about 50 years ago that were taken out. And so I've made it my mission to plant more of these in town, and we now have a dozen around the city. Willow, various types, and who knows what this is. No good guess, though. Good guess. This is American chestnut. Yeah, a tree that was decimated in the 1920s, used to be 20% of the forest in the United States, or in the Eastern United States. Oak, who's allergic to oak pollen? Yeah, get ready. And then this absolutely stunning tree. This tree you will smell or hear before you see it. It'll be full of bees, and it smells crazy. Yeah, linden or basswood, or I'm sorry, am I wrong? No, this is black locust mixed up there. This is black locust, also a wonderfully smelly tree. These are linden or basswood, and they too are trees that will hum when they're in bloom right in front of City Hall. You walk by, you're going to hear these trees humming, and these are the flowers just gone past into the seed stage, and then the seeds stick around all winter long, and are again a valuable food source for many, many animals. Maple, yeah. Whirligigs, ash, similar but not two together. Another ash variety. And there are plenty of trees that produce berries. So that was mountain ash, not an ash tree itself, but mountain ash. And who knows what this one is? Looks like an apple, it's about as big as a softball. Not many grow around here. Liz, what is that? Osage orange. Again, a tree that was widely planted by farmers because it was a good fence post. Hop horn beam, and this little tiny thing. Who would ever think that could grow? Well, it can grow into a tree, millions of trees by the way, that can be easily 100 feet tall and 20 feet around. This tree, cottonwood, was the tree that allowed Europeans to settle the west because they needed fuel for the steam engines and steam boats. And it was cottonwood that provided that fuel. They grew all along the river banks. We have a few in town. They're beautiful trees. People think they're a nuisance because they're not a nuisance. Listen, we're the nuisance. This is one of my favorite. It's a small tree or big shrub hazel. And if you want a plant, if you have a place and you do in your yard for a small tree, maybe 10 foot by 10 foot, this is the tree to plant. I guarantee you, you'll never get to eat one of these. The squirrels will beat you to it, but it's a beautiful, beautiful plant. And here's sycamore. We've seen the leaf. Yeah, we've seen the leaf, and this is the seed pod of a sycamore. Flowers have sex, as Brian Pfeiffer would say. And sometimes they have sex with themselves, sometimes with others. Sometimes they don't know what sex they are. But they do have sex, and that produces seeds and fruit. This is, we know that one, yeah, grows everywhere. Clearly it had a lot of sex. Here's a small mountain maple tree. You'll find quite a few of these up in Hubbard Park. We can't grow them where there's a lot of compaction or salt, but they're beautiful little trees. Again, a red oak. We're planting many red oaks now. Acorns, we all know about acorns. Well, blue jays are one of the primary distributors of acorns. And this tree is not native to central Vermont, but it has had an outbreak over the last couple hundred years. There's plenty of them around, and there's more coming. Red maple. We'll talk more about this in a little bit. This is after the flowers have gone by and the seeds have begun to form. It happens so fast, a couple of weeks, and they're all on the ground sprouting. This is the only buckeye in town. It's over at Loomis and Main. And when it blooms, it's magnificent, and it produces big nuts that you can throw at each other. And here it is, this tree is probably 170 or 80 years old. We don't really know a ginkgo. This is a tree that was lost to much of the world, but the people in the mountains of northern China knew where it was. And when it was quote unquote rediscovered, it was planted around the world because it was such a magnificent tree. That was in the early 1800s. And if you want to have a fascinating read, read about how ginkgos have sex. You will be blown away that this thing can do what it does. Yes, right. It's an unfortunate name, but if you live around the fruit, you know why. But I'm telling you, that's not the problem. We're the problem. There are many people in the world who pick these up as soon as they drop and eat them. If you let them rot on the sidewalk, then they smell like vomit or dog poop. But the only female tree in town grows in our front yard. So if you ever want to come see what it's like, let me know. Liz and I have traveled a lot in the world and I've managed to see some beautiful trees. This is a yew tree in the UK that's 1500 years old. Yew trees were planted in churchyards often. These are Baobab trees. Get ready. In Africa, probably 10,000 years old. Don't let anybody tell you a tree can only live 3,000 years. Probably 10,000 years old, but they don't form growth rings. So they're estimating that. A banyan tree and Cuba and a copac tree. Here's the crack willow. Where are you? This is the oldest crack willow tree in Vermont. Yes, this is your crack willow. Well, my neighbors. Your neighbors. And this is Michael Sherman standing next to it. It's an absolutely stunning tree. What are you saying? Crack. Yeah, the branches crack off easily. This is Lord's, help me, Marshfield. Lord's Hill, thank you. And that's one of the last remaining stands of probably unharvested timber in Vermont. Never harvested. But this is right up near Maple Corner. You don't have to go very far to find really old trees. And particularly these are sugar maples that are just defying all expectation of life. Here's, we've seen this, this is a fence row. So that was a place where trees were protected by the stones and from the animals. And these trees still exist in that old fence row. They're almost gone. But that would be, you know, 130 years ago. So there used to be two fence rows. There's just down, we're down to one now. Trees like people get old. So this is an old one of these. Yellow birch. You look at that and you think, my God, how can it live? Well, look at my skin, you know? Yellow birch is magnificent. And trees sprout. Willow in particular is a big sprouter. But right around the corner from here on Hubbard Street is a silver maple that was four foot in diameter, it got cut down. Now there's two sprouts out of that that are each 20 inches in diameter. So trees sprout, in many cases, we see them sprout out of what we call nursery logs or nursery stumps, mother stumps. And once the stump rots away, there you are with this tree up on legs. Very common to see this out in the woods, particularly with yellow birch. So who loves trees? And you feed rocks to trees? No. Trees can accommodate lots of things. One thing they cannot accommodate is wire wrapped around them. Even nylon string will kill a tree. Certainly, this is why I get to be a jerk about Christmas lights every year. Who knows I'm a jerk about Christmas lights? Yes, because that kills a tree. You don't think about it, but you leave them on there for 10 years and the tree is girdled. This is a tree that was really sad, a big, big, beautiful black walnut. And people who will remain unnamed, but you may know them, downtown just killed this tree by wrapping it with wire. Or we trim them in this kind of a crazy way so that we can have power wires. Plow snow up against them. Yeah. So there's lots of ways we can kill trees. I'm going to try and stop this thing for just a minute because this is a story. There, I'm trying to jump it around. This is a story that I wanted to tell because this really clarifies the relationship that we have with trees. Remember, I was standing in the woods realizing that all these things were living things just like me. What do you think the trees were thinking? Oh, there's that guy who's a living thing just like we are. I don't know what they're thinking. I have a lot to learn about trees. But what I know is that these oak trees, this is near where I grew up in Michigan, these oak trees were over 300 years old. And there was probably a quarter acre of them right next to a school, junior high and high school. And they were going to cut these trees down because the logs were very valuable. And they didn't see, they needed to balance the budget. They didn't see that these trees were a resource that was nowhere, anywhere close to what you could imagine, to have a 300-year-old stand of trees there. So the kids really rallied and I helped with my sister helped rally and we got them left. And they're now being studied on a regular basis by kids in the school. Where else are you going to go find a 300-year-old tree? So, yeah, you can core them or you can use another tool to do that. Yeah, we've done that on the Elm tree on Court Street. But trees get dinged all the time by downtown, by snow plows. When you plant a tree, you get it from the nursery, it sometimes looks like this or like this. It's trouble from the start. A lot of trees die within a few years. These are trees we planted, Bob's planted some of these with me. And here we've taken care, these look like a mess, but we've taken care to trimming the roots and getting them in the ground in an effective way. So those trees have survived beautifully. But if you don't pay attention to the roots, this is what it ends up looking like. It's called a girdling root and literally it strangles the tree. A beautiful tree in front of the Unitarian Church came very close to dying because it had a girdling root on it. They cut it out and it's now doing well. Who wants to kill a tree? This is the way to do it. Guaranteed you're going to kill a tree if you use what we call volcano mulching. Yeah, you've got to keep the mulch away from the stem. And who knows how to prune a tree? Well, we've all learned by killing a few. And this is a good way to kill a tree, to leave these stubs like this. The tree can't contain any disease anymore. This is Norway, Maple in front of Kellogg Hubbard Library. And literally half this tree split off about 20 years ago. And it's managed over those 20 years to begin to encapsulate itself to keep other disease out. So trees, if we treat them reasonably well, will take care of themselves. Unfortunately, there are some real problems. This is Ash, who's heard of the Emerald Ash Boer. Yeah, started near as we can tell up near national life. And probably, again, the trees are not the problem. We're the problem. These little insects that cause this damage can only travel about 10 miles a year. But when they land in here and lay a larva, the larva digs into the living layer of the tree and ultimately kills it. This is on our way out to Michigan one year, and you can see where this has already happened. It's like the Elm Blight was only much worse. And this is where we're headed. So we hung these green traps around the town so that we can see where the little beetle is. And so far in Montpelio, there's about six areas that are infested. But this summer, it's going to blow up and it'll be everywhere. It's just the nature of the beast. The insect can only fly about 10 miles a year. But what spread this from Detroit all the way across most of the United States, like this, in 25 years was people transporting firewood that had the little insect in the bark. So we're the problem again. And there's no great solution for it if you have ash that you want to take care of. Give me a call and we'll talk. Yeah, yes, yeah, we have this is a green ash. Primarily in the woods, we have white ash. And then along the rivers are black ash. And that's a big problem for native populations because they use the bark and the wood in various ways for in basket making. So yeah, and thousands of other animals depend upon, I mean, thousands of other animals depend upon ash. So we know what an elm looks like alive, very classic vase shape. Here it is as it dies, they tend to close up like this so you can recognize these trees from far away. This was one out in East Montpelier that the old tree board visited and it's now gone. You were there, weren't you, Ellen? No. And this is the Court Street Elm with a good friend of mine. It's a magnificent tree. And what does it take to keep it magnificent? Well, it's resistant. We know that because it's never been treated with any insecticide and yet it still is growing. But this character, Adam McCullough was the city arborist and he spent two days up in that tree cleaning it out, taking all the dead wood out and that made a huge difference to keeping it alive. But it's beautiful any time of year. Here we are just coming into spring and in another few weeks it'll look like this. So this is on Court Street at the Statehouse End and it produces millions of seeds like this. And here is American Chestnut. Again, a tree that was 20% of the forest in the eastern United States. Now we're down to just a few remnants. There was a big one up in Berlin that died last year, finally due to blight. But this is the flower. It's crazy. This is the flower on this tree. And then it produces these burrs, which you can't pick up bare-handed, I'll warn you. But this tree, in its time, fed many animals, it produces nuts like this, an invaluable resource, as well as a beautiful tree. Basically, as soon as leaves unfurl, they are food. And isn't that the way it should be? I mean, the rest of the world can't go to shawls and buy stuff. So here's the shawls. Sometimes it's over the top and invasive, but a lot of times it's very natural. These guys have to eat and what they eat is the living layer in the tree. And we can protect some trees. We can manage some of the populations. But a lot of things live in trees. And without trees, the world would be a pretty dismal place. In trees are inside of trees. Or they make their home from wood and hang it in a tree. So that little cherry is major bird food. Yeah, they're showing up the last couple of weeks. People have been reporting them. And the woodpecker is not going to kill your tree. Okay, it will not kill your tree. I know it'll decimate it, but there's stuff in there that's killing the tree. So not the woodpecker. Yeah, this was right down at the confluence. Sapsuckers are back in town. Again, they don't kill the tree, but they make food for lots and lots of other critters, including a lot of insects. This butterfly winters over in a tree cavity. Huh, what's that? It's a beech tree, and they gotta go up and get the nuts, right? A lot of things live on trees as well as in them. And we could spend easily a couple of weeks just talking about what lives on these trees. Again, if you're really smart, you can figure out the relationships between the mosses and fungi and lichen that grow on trees. Other living things live under trees. And so these spring ephemerals only live in Maple Beach Woods. Without Maple and Beech trees, we would not have these magnificent flowers. And we're coming on another four to six weeks is when we're gonna get out and see them. So this is the reason I'm on the tree board. This is, and this is the reason I'm on the tree board. Because we ran out of big trees. These are our grandkids down in North Carolina. And everybody needs to hug a tree once in a while. This is a young man, he's now just out of high school, who had a chestnut tree that he wanted to keep in his bedroom over the winter. I said, Earl, you can't do it, we gotta go plant it. So it's now 15 feet high up near the tower in Hubbard Park. These kids help plant trees downtown Montpelier. We regularly have plantings. Union Elementary School. This was a wonderful project that Lynn Wild honchoed on St. Paul Street, where kids measured trees over a period of time. And really enjoyed learning how trees grew and learning a lot about them. This was one of the many work crews that come in through Hubbard Park. And these guys were really just so relentless at digging holes and planting trees. And who knows when the best time to plant a tree is? 20 years ago. Who knows the second best time? Yeah, now coming up in the spring is a great time or fall. And again, if you're looking for a small tree to plant somewhere in your yard, and I know you have room in your yard to plant one, stop mowing that corner and plant a damn tree. This is a tree you want to plant. This is shad or serviceberry. And it is a magnificent tree. The first one you'll see blooming in the woods on the hillsides in the spring. It has two forms, a shrub form and a tree form. And when the berries come, you'll never get one unless you are willing to beat the birds because the birds will just woof them down. And they are a berry unlike any you've ever eaten. I encourage you to pick a handful anyway. And then oak. An oak tree is special for many reasons, but for me it's very special in that it's a tree that basically came to Central Vermont due to human beings. So human beings brought them here and they have now found a good home. This is from the tower at Hubbard Park, there's a big beautiful one. We planted these two in front of the post office in 2000. So that's only 20 some years ago. This was a little younger, we planted this in the parking lot at the sheriff's office. And it's doing great. We have red oaks and white oaks. We planted now a lot of white oaks, typically not a native tree here. But it was in the Burlington area. There were white oaks there that were 500 years old when we rolled into town. Now there's only, who knows where the Maple Place shopping mall is? Yeah, that piece of, anyway. That used to be covered with white oaks that were 500 years old. They all got cut down except for one. And you can still see that one tree if you know where to look. So we planted a bunch of white oaks. This is right near the Northfield Savings Bank. This tree is now three times that big. Pin oaks are another tree that we planted quite a few of around town. Here in front of the church, Christchurch. But the reason to plant oaks is that about 400 other living things depend upon oaks to survive. And those 400 other living things then are the pyramid on which many other living things live. So when we plant an oak tree, we're planting a river of life, basically. Human beings, and blue jays, where they were non-native human beings. Yeah, and there are problems. Clearly, some people are allergic to toke pollen. But get over it. Red oak in the fall is just magnificent. Another tree I would encourage you to go visit. These are down by Montpilier High School right as you're driving in. There's two on the right-hand side. This is a bur oak. This tree, if we planted it in the right place and human beings don't screw around with it, is a 500-year-old tree, eventually. So humans are a big part of the problem for trees. But this is my probably, I don't know, one of my favorite trees. Beech, beech tree. And this time of year is the time to go out and look at them because these buds are opening up. Every single day, they open more and more. We're not quite at this stage yet, but another month we will be. And you can just see them unfurl. It's like origami. American beech, that's what we have. There's others in the family, but in terms of beech, that's it. Yep. But it's amazing to think that these leaves are all in that little bud and out they come. I don't know how they do it. And then to see the fine hairs that grow along the edge of the leaves. So for me it's a lot less important about the name of this tree and more important to me just to enjoy what it is any time of the year. These trees also, like oaks, are ones that tend to keep their leaves all winter long. Nobody's quite sure why, but it's probably related to an evolutionary advantage of leaving the fertilizer on the ground in the spring when they need it. One problem is that there's a blight now that is really decimating beech trees. It's a bark disease. Pretty good sugar in day today. This is up on Morse Farm, the old sugar house. My first job coming to Montpelier was hauling buckets of sap from the Morse's. And so there are many trees we could tap, but sugar maple, this is a, you can see where the taps had been in there, is the one. Here's the mother tree and the daughter tree. And sugar maples, when they bloom, it's a yellow flower. Red maples, on the other hand, have red flowers that are a little later. And this is a tree that can go, these flowers can either be male or female. They can switch or they can be both. Yeah, so what's all this trans stuff, a big issue. These don't grow in Florida, by the way. And then almost before the flowers drop, the leaves start popping out. The ground is covered with the old flowers. This is a tree that sets seed in the spring and is just a magnificent tree. It doesn't like to grow in an area where there's salt, so don't plant it in your yard next to the street. And then back to sugar maple. And we can just enjoy these trees year round. Year round. Don't have others to communicate with? Yep. Not only communicate with, but they feed each other underground. Yeah, I mean, they're living things like us. Yeah, both in the fall and then again in the spring, this is a really special tree. Because it just stands out along the hillside. This is one that I planted in our yard when my son, our son, was this tall. And now that tree is 60 feet tall, 45 years later. So trees do grow. You want to make sure you're thinking ahead when you plant them. And these are the cones of the trees. There are butternuts left. I had a few pictures of them, but I pulled it out because there are very few left. But butternuts out at North Branch Nature Center. And they're still producing nuts, and the nuts are still sprouting into trees, but they're not lasting long, unfortunately. So there are times and places where, you know, as fellow living beings, we deem that we need to take these trees down. This is up on the Statehouse Trail into Hubbard Park, and the old red pines were dying and falling down. We didn't want them to hit people, so we took them down. They were about 60 years old. This is up in the Catholic Cemetery. It was unfortunate that these trees got as far as they did. They never should have gotten this far, but by then they were falling on people. And these trees had to come down because they were doing foundation work. They could have done all that work by hand. I'm just saying. The good news is we managed to save the two other trees in front but we couldn't save the big ones. But, you know, there are plenty of times when people get in the way and we've got to protect the trees. So this is a road crew, not an easy thing to do. This is over in the meadow where many of the trees were planted way too close to the roadways, and they overgrew signs and sidewalks. This Kellogg Hubbard Library, a great sugar maple, spent a lot of money last summer trying to keep it alive. This week they had to take it down. It was dropping limbs on people. Now, had it been a different circumstance, you could have left it for another 50 years, but not there. Oh, who's this? Huh, wait a minute. I think I recognize this person. And we planted a tree here because we took another one down next to it. So anytime you take down a tree, I would encourage you to plant at least one, if not two. This was a beautiful old red oak tree over on the west side of town that had to come down again. It was dropping limbs on cars. And this tree was 170 years old and it got turned into firewood, thankfully. And this is the wood in part of our house. I don't know where it came from, but it was probably local and has been in our house now since 1880 and is still going to be there for a while. So we have uses for trees. This is the Washington County Courthouse. We planted that tree probably now in less than 15 years ago. And this is a couple of years old. It's now above the top of the building. So trees grow fast if we get them in the right place and we have a good crew planting them. Either a young crew or an old crew or a very old crew. This is over on Bailey and she really wanted this tree planted and so we planted it and it's now 20 feet tall. Here's Lynn Wild with her crew. They had a blast and this was a tree. They had to take down a maple, sugar maple, next to the church there and planted this oak and it's doing fabulously. So downtown trees are a different story altogether. We can either plant one like this or we can let them grow like this. You know, I say it's hard to plant trees and yet, look at this thing, come on. Box elder by the way, one of those trash trees. But for various reasons we were stuck for years with planting trees in these 4x4 holes in the ground and it just didn't work. At some point we figured out a way to excavate around them, leave the tree in and put new soil in there and those trees really had a jump start. What we then realized was if we started from scratch and dug a great big hole and built that hole properly, it would cost a lot of money, about $15,000 for this little hole. But it should give us a tree that could live to be 100 years old. So that's what we did here. We put now four in like this and we have two more going in in front of right a drugstore this spring. There's the tree itself. This particular tree is in front of the liquor store and that is a honey locust. But we've got an elm, a couple of maples, and then we have a grate. The grates alone are ridiculously expensive now. This grate costs about $4,000. So we're trying to find other ways to do it. So when you're driving down whatever road you drive down, every day passing those trees, yeah, think about where we are and talk to them. When you walk by and see that elm tree or go up to this place and just, it's magnificent. These are living, fellow living creatures and without them our life would be dismal, absolutely dismal. And with them, there's a lot of joy in life. So I am absolutely thrilled to be here. If there are questions, I'm sorry I couldn't stop the slideshow in the middle and answer questions during, but this would be a good time to ask questions if you haven't. Yes. Thank you. Okay, yeah. It's a good idea to mulch trees that you're planting in your yards because it helps preserve moisture, keeps the weeds down. It's all around a good thing. And you can make it deep and wide, but don't put it up against the stem itself, the trunk. Keep it away from the trunk and then it's fine. And come back and renew it every year. It doesn't just have to be wood chips, but don't use wood bark. Use wood chips or leaves. We do. There's one that grows right over here. A little ways down there. There's on Terrestry, there are two huge ones. Horse chestnuts, sorry. Yes, I am. Thank you. What's the future for beech trees given the bark disease? I don't know. To lose the ash and the beeches and maybe the amlogs. Yeah. I mean, what we've seen is that global trade has introduced a lot of issues. You know, that's where many of the invasive trees, plants have come from and insects. We're not sure where it came from or why it's a problem. But certainly with warming, climate change, we're going to see tremendous changes in the forest that are really hard to envision. One of the reasons that we're planting more oak trees is they tend to do better in warmer climate. When it was, you know, regularly 20 below zero in Montpelier, maybe we wouldn't have planted them. But yes. It's always interesting to speculate on how old some of these enormous trees are. And out in East Montpelier, there's a stupendous oak, not far from East Montpelier. And we think it's a burr oak from the, you know, looking at books and so on. But I have no idea. I estimate it at 200 years old as a 500. I know that particular tree. Let's talk after. I'd love to find out. Is it on the Kelton Road? It might be. I'm not sure the name of the road. Yeah. When you see these big old white oaks, and there's one up in Moscow, there's one in Watesfield. They were planted and they are literally this big now. And yeah, they're old trees. There are two ways that you can really accurately determine the age. One is this little boring machine that takes a core about the size of a pencil all the way in. It's a pain, honestly, and expensive to do. But then you got to count the rings. You get to count the rings. Or now there are ultrasonic devices. You put it up to the tree and it thumps its way in and counts the reflected sound coming back out. We did the big elm tree on Court Street, and there's a little rot in the middle of it, but 170 years seemed to be a good guess. But any time a tree gets cut down, I would encourage you to just take the time to sit down, have a cup of coffee or not, and count the rings. And then just be humbled by this thing that's lived far longer than you're ever going to live, ever. I tried the other day. It wasn't quite clean enough yet. But yes, I will. Allison. Two questions. One is do you... No, we don't. Are you here? Yeah. Is that a katalka? Yeah. Beautiful. Good job. Just so beautiful. I planted that tree. Whoa. Yeah. And there's also an oak there. We planted those when... What was their name? Canavan. Chris Canavan. Yeah. Was redoing that into a playground. And we got money to plant three trees. Two of them survived. Yeah, it's a beautiful tree. Right here? Yeah. Right back here. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Are they being affected? In Ireland? I don't know. No. Langdon chops. Yes. Those are... They have seed pods. Yes. Those are honey locusts. A seed pod variety. Messy trees. Yeah, they are. But you know what? Some cultures plant those trees to feed pigs. And they raise pork based on that. Yeah. Thank you for reminding me of that. Yes. Two questions. If you go through the main part of town and you're just going up a hill, it's on the right. South. South of two places. Yeah. Go up the hill. Just as you're starting up that little hill. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. If you look for it, it's obvious. Yeah. Which is denuded. Yes. Okay. Doubtful. But I mean there are trees up there. They're like this. I was up way up in the Arctic and I would see a willow tree that was a hundred years old and it was this tall. It's just too difficult for trees. Yeah. Okay. They get blown away. It varies. We're in the midst of a big change at the tree board. We've worked very closely with parks too. We couldn't do our work without parks. And in the past we bought trees from out in the Northwest. They've been good sized trees with big bare roots. So we don't buy potted trees. But that source is gone now so we're looking for others. And we just restarted our nursery out at the feast farm. You know about the feast farm. Food's growing here from the feast farm. And we'll have, my goal is to have 100 trees a year ready to put in the ground. Yeah. A wide mix of trees. You never want to plant just one kind like up at Central Vermont Community Hospital. Green ash all came down. What did they plant? Freeman maple. They'll die at some point. I mean you've got to mix it up. So we'll have a wide variety of trees. Some trees are intolerant of salt. And that's a big problem in Montpelier because we've got a lot of salty roads. Compaction, people walk around, the trees not going to grow. So we try and mix it up and find trees that are appropriate to every site. The project we did a couple years ago we planted about 400 trees all over the city in people's front yards. We asked them whether we could. We didn't, no they weren't flamingos, but we didn't necessarily ask them what kind they wanted. We said, here's your choice, this tree or that tree. And we'd say either here or there. Because I didn't want them to all end up crab apples next to the sidewalk. Nothing wrong with people but we don't have an imagination sometimes. The bike path is a classic example of a place that has been invaded by invasive plant species. And buckthorn is a big one. It's a nasty, nasty plant unless you need a tree that grows anywhere. But anyway, a lot of those are being taken out and then we're replanting with other trees that are more appropriate and we'll do well there. The one thing about the bike path down by the high school track, it's the last chance you're going to have to see what was close to native population of trees. So think about what was it like in 1750 here? It's hard to imagine. Not a lot different than some places and that's one place that there's still a few remnants left. They're not that old, but it probably represents a good idea of what was here in 1750 and earlier. What's what? What is it that's there? Well, there's some beautiful beech trees. There's, here I go. Where was that memory loss program? Take a walk down there. I walk there a lot, but I don't know what kind of trees they are. Well, now you get to not worry about that and just enjoy them. Bob, it appears there will be one that is not, is the Liberty Elm. They had a good marketing department, but the biologists were not so good. Yeah, there's a half dozen that are very reliable. You know, we don't know, but they're doing well. We've planted now a couple dozen different varieties of Elm in town, including on Elm Street. And they're doing well. We planted one in front of Mad Taco. Let's hope for it right on the street. And there's some good plantings in Berry right on Main Street of Elms. A few too many as far as I'm concerned, but I'm not the tree board there. The first one is you told us we should go home and plant two particular trees in our yard. And I'm willing to do that if you'll tell me again who they are. Shad? Service barrier Shad. Yeah. What is it? What are you saying? Service Berry. Service Berry? Berry. Or Shad. Like everybody knows that except me? Yep. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Also called June Berry sometimes. I didn't know that they were the same tree. Thank you. And here's, this is important. Are you listening? I am listening. They come as either a shrub or a tree. You see a lot of shrubs over by the co-op. They're fine, but I'm a tree guy. And what was the other one? The other one was Hazel. Which Hazel? Well, which Hazel, yeah. Just Hazel. Hazel like hazelnut. Hazelnut. We're on a first name basis. Yes. Hazel. Right. There you go. Grace and Hazel. Thank you very much. And both of those are small. You know, they're going to be 10 foot by 10 foot by 10 foot. They're gorgeous. No. And I hope it doesn't get there. Yeah. Oaks would be the one. White oaks in particular, but either one. I planted a red bud, which is a southern tree in front of the hamburger place down here on Berry Street. Yeah, buddies. And it's doing great. All you need there is to keep it out of a really windy site. So I'll give it a little microclimate and it red buds a gorgeous tree. In some places it sometimes it has been. There are appropriate places for columnar trees. It's a variety that was selected because it doesn't branch out. Probably the best use of a columnar that I've seen in Montpelier is down by the state art building. And if you go back in the gallery space there, there's four columnar oaks that are beautiful. But I would not plant it on the street. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yep. Yep. Now let me tell you a sub story to that when a bunch of people that look like my color came here and took over, there was not enough stone, easily available stone to build a frigging chimney. Wait a minute. There's stone everywhere. They had to go to the Middlesex Gorge to get enough stone to build a chimney when we first showed up here in Montpelier. Well, where was all the stone? It was covered by feet of topsoil. Killed the beavers, cut the trees, put some rain on the ground. Literally within 20 years, we had exposed tremendous amounts of stone. The topsoil was gone. Gosh, that was good. Yeah. Yeah. So thanks for that. The electric utilities do a fair amount of cutting and a lot of amount of growing. You want to comment on the choices they're making? Sure. I'll step into that bear trap. We here in the city, the tree board works closely with the power companies, and they do what we ask them to do, which is to keep the power on. What that sometimes means is they butcher the trees. That said, there are exceptional circumstances. The big ginkgo tree would have been mowed down into one of those V-shaped haircuts had we not talked to them about other options, and they ended up pushing the wires out over the street with a special arm. It cost us ratepayers money, but it meant that they didn't have to kill that, basically deform that tree. In general, I think we demand to have reliable power . It's one thing if you live in Montpelier, but if you live out in Adamant or someplace like that, there's a lot of trees along the lines, and those trees have to get trimmed if you're going to keep the wires up in a windstorm. How's that? I mean, in a lot of words, this is the choice. The city base where it passes it on to the taxpayers, or the utility base where it passes on the ratepayers. Some people say, well, couldn't we bury all the lines here in town? Write me a check. We'll get them buried tomorrow, but that's not going to happen. One more question, and not from you. Maybe two. Do I say what? I don't know what to say. Okay. Yes. And isn't that the reason to plant them? Thank you. Thank you all. There is a handout here if you want. It talks about some of the trees I enjoy talking with, and then has a list of books that I would recommend.