Hybrid Elms

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Hybrid Elms

Tree of the Month May/June 2018
by: Lesley Bruce Smith, ISA Certified Arborist

When I was a little girl, like many who grew up in communities east of the Mississippi River, I lived on a street lined with American Elms. Although it is against every piece of advise we now share, to line streets with the exact same species, I can’t help but think back in wonder at those amazing cathedral like arches that lined so many American City streets in the last century. It is a memory held by so many of us over the age of 50 that it is little wonder that so much hybridizing has been done with the American Elm.

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Tree Planting Tribulation

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Tree Planting Tribulation

Mother Nature’s Moment June/July 2018
by: Lesley Bruce Smith, ISA Certified Arborist

This time of year we find ourselves on a lot of properties that have young trees that are struggling or dead. As arborists we are the ones that get called in to diagnose, treat and in the sad cases do post mortem on trees that were installed less than two or three years ago and have just not survived. The reason we get called instead of the folks who installed the trees is because the infamous “guarantee” has expired along with the tree.

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Poison Ivy Primer

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Poison Ivy Primer

Mother Nature's Moment
© 2017, 2011 text and photos by Lesley Bruce Smith

This season finds many of us out in our gardens or in local forest preserves, with fall color not far away.  Since we spend a good deal of time in your yards, as well, we know that there is a lot of poison ivy out there, even more with all the rain we have had.  As professionals, we realize that the best way to avoid this often agonizing malady is to be able to identify and stay clear of the plant.

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Trees Are Tribal

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Trees Are Tribal

Mother Nature’s Moment May 2018
by: Lesley Bruce Smith, ISA Certified Arborist

The longer we work with trees the more amazed we are at their ability to communicate, not only with us, but with each other. This seems like a ludicrous idea to many, simply because trees’ ability to communicate is not like our own. They do not use words, yet as we learn more about the way they communicate, it is surprising and often astonishing. They are so much wiser than we think.

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Give Your Trees a Breath of Fresh Air

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Give Your Trees a Breath of Fresh Air

Backyard Wisdom - March/ April 2018
by: Gilbert A Smith, ISA Board Certified Master Arborist
photo credits: Gilbert A Smith and Lesley Bruce Smith
    
Give your trees a breath of fresh air? Normally we think the other way around, that trees give us a breath of fresh air, and they do. Without trees we would soon choke on our Carbon Dioxide (CO2) and die from lack of Oxygen (O2). Thank you trees! But did you know that tree roots breathe just like we do, “in with the O2 and out with the CO2”? Now you can amaze your friends with this myth busting fact. Try it out on your most knowledgable gardening friends. You'll be surprised by how few people, even landscapers, know this.

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Spring Reminder

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Spring Reminder

Mother Nature’s Moment, April 2018
by: Lesley Bruce Smith, ISA Certified Arborist

We all wait, not so patiently, for the warmer weather and spring time flowers. It is certainly one of our favorite times of year. The trees and shrubs are ready to explode, having worked very hard last summer, when the sunlight was at its zenith, creating all the buds that are full of sugars and about to burst out into flowers, leaves and eventually fruit. The key here is to remember that this year’s flowers and leaves were created last year, so if autumn or spring clean-up includes “shearing” the outside of the  shrubs, most of the flowers will go away. A sad thing that we see repeated EVERY year.

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Interview With a Tree About Bark

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Interview With a Tree About Bark

Backyard Wisdom
by: Gilbert A Smith, ISA Board Certified Master Arborist

I’m speaking with a 60 year old Black Locust, Robinia pseudoacacia, who grows in the village parkway in Wilmette, Illinois.  

Gil: Mr Black Locust I couldn’t help but notice the beautiful flutes and ridges in your bark. I had to stop and talk. Why is your bark so different from other trees, like the smooth bark of a Beech for instance or the white bark of a Birch?  

Mr. Black Locust: Well let me first clear up one misconception you have concerning me.

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Baldcypress, Taxodium distichum

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Baldcypress, Taxodium distichum

Tree of the Month October/November 2017
by: Lesley Bruce Smith, ISA Certified Arborist

Baldcypress, contrary to what most Chicagoans realize, is a native Illinois tree. Although it is found naturally growing more readily in the southern parts of our state it can survive and thrive in the Chicago area. It loves wet boggy like soil conditions and its wood is wonderfully resistant to both rot and insects.

Probably one of the most distinctive characteristics of this beautiful and majestic tree is the fact that it is a needle bearing, cone producing deciduous tree that drops its leaves in the fall after a brilliant show of autumn color. Another unusual identification feature is its propensity to grow “knees” under its branch spread sticking up out of the ground looking much like supporting buttresses. 

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Suckers Suckers

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Suckers Suckers

Backyard Wisdom, October/November 2017
by: Gilbert A Smith, ISA Board Certified Master Arborist

Sixty years ago when I was a young sprout, my mother taught me to remove all of the little shoots that came up around the base of our French Hybrid Lilac so it would flower well. The lesson from her was that suckers “sucked” the “juice” out of the Lilac. Many old fashioned landscapers still do this.  

When I was being trained as an arborist fifty years ago I was taught to remove all the suckers from the root crown, trunk and branches of the trees because I was taught it is healthier for the tree and that it looked better.

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Fertilizing Facts and Fiction

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Fertilizing Facts and Fiction

Mother Nature’s Moment, October/November 2017
by: Lesley Bruce Smith, ISA Certified Arborist

This time of year we often receive calls from individuals requesting to have their trees fertilized. Fertilizing one’s trees seems like such a good thing to do for them, and yet there are so many misconceptions about tree fertilizer that, as arborists, we often are trying to bring clarity to this area of tree care.

The first thing we need to understand about fertilizer, or the first fact, is that it is NOT tree food. Trees make their own food from the energy of the sun!! This is actually science we learned in the second grade but many of us have forgotten it, or at least, have forgotten the ramifications of that fact.  

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Ginkgo biloba

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Ginkgo biloba

August/September 2017 Tree of the Month
photos and text by: Lesley Bruce Smith

The unusual leaves of the Ginkgo tree are both lovely and familiar due to it’s many unique traits.  It’s leaves are unlike those of any other existing tree, although fossil records are plentiful of this ancient tree, which even predates the conifers, of which they share many important characteristics.  The Ginkgo biloba is also known as the Maidenhair Tree because its leaves are similar in shape to the fronds of the maidenhair fern. 

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Anthocyanins

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Anthocyanins

Backyard Wisdom - September 2017
Gilbert A Smith, ISA Board Certified Master Arborist

Can you see the red color of the spring foliage on this Burr Oak? It looks like fall color and in fact this is the same dynamic that goes on every fall. The color is a pigment called anthocyanin, which is responsible for red and purple fall color. But what is it doing in the young spring leaf tissue? Red Anthocyanins are one of the 3 plant pigments.Carotenoids providing orange colors like carrots and chlorophyll, which we all know, is green. These three pigments are present in leaves all the time but the green from chlorophyll usually dominates. 

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July / August Tree of the Month • Burr Oak

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July / August Tree of the Month • Burr Oak

Burr Oak Quercus macrocarpa

by: Gilbert A Smith, ISA Certified Master Arborist

The Burr Oak, or Quercus macrocarpa, is one of our absolute favorite trees.  It’s magnificent stature is a real stand out in the native Illinois prairie. It has a really thick, sometimes several inches, tough craggy bark that just can’t be mistaken for any other species and that same bark makes it able to survive the prairie fires that raged across the Illinois plains in earlier days.

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Selecting the Right Person to Trim Your Trees

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Selecting the Right Person to Trim Your Trees

Mother Nature’s Moment - July/August 2017
by: Lesley Bruce Smith, ISA Certified Arborist

A few weeks ago a friend of ours who lives outside our service area asked me about how to choose someone to trim his trees. His inquiry came in like this…

We’d actually like a filtered referral. A couple of years ago a friend at church hired a tree trimer and afterward felt that both he and his tree had been scalped. How do we decide if a big franchise or landscaping company will do any better or worse than a man with a rope and a chain saw? What questions should we ask?
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Spring Weather and Your Trees

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Spring Weather and Your Trees

Mother Nature’s Moment - July/August 2017
by: Lesley Bruce Smith, ISA Certified Arborist

I don’t know if you have noticed, but we seem somewhat overwhelmed with how the rain and sun and rain, and rain and rain and sun have created huge amounts of growth on all our trees and shrubs, and all yours too!  The trees and shrubs love mild (not too hot) moist conditions which trigger them to put out lots of green leaves=food producers=water evaporators.

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May / June Tree of the Month • Black Cherry

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May / June Tree of the Month • Black Cherry

Prunus serotina  | Also called Wild Cherry or Rum Cherry

by: Gilbert A Smith, ISA Certified Master Arborist

A large shade tree in our area of 60 feet tall, Black Cherry can grow to 100 feet where its “feet” are not standing in our heavy, clay, Illinois soil. Actually almost every tree species except Willow and Cottonwood grow 30% taller east of Lake Michigan due to the well drained, loose soil that accommodates tree roots so much better than prairie soil.

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Witches Broom

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Witches Broom

It sounds medieval, or at least Harry Potteresque, I know, but take a look at the picture and you will agree, witches brooming is rightly named. Now, as you drive the expressways in the large northern cities you will begin to have the affliction that Lesley and I refer to as “the arborist’s eye”.  Be careful! Don’t take your eyes off the road, but you can begin to notice Witches Broom everywhere near heavy automobile traffic, especially in the winter when the leaves are notcovering up the ends of branches.

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Trees and Air Pollution

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Mother Nature’s Moment - May/June 2017
by: Lesley Bruce Smith, ISA Certified Arborist

Gilbert has discussed the phenomenon of Witches Brooming on trees. It is essentially one of the trees’ reactions to pollution. But he did not mention the fact that one of the amazing and now proven facts about trees and air pollution is that most deciduous trees have an amazing capacity for absorbing our pollution.

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Tree Flowers of the Month

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Tree Flowers of the Month

Tree of the Month - April 2017

by: ISA Certified Arborist Master Arborist, Gilbert A Smith and Certified Arborist, Lesley Bruce Smith

Right now every plant feels like it is flowering and the trees are at full flower strength too, Spring frolicking isn’t just for the birds and the bees. Much of that chartreuse green we see on the trees all over is not the expected new green leaves, so much as the tree flowers. There are, of course, the beautiful showy flowers of the Magnolias, Crabs, Redbuds, and Callery Pears that we love. But the less showy flowers that are bright green and sometimes less vibrant hues of pink or yellow are also in abundance this time of year. 

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