As urban areas continue to expand across Utah, so does a phenomenon known as the "urban heat island effect." This occurs when cities experience significantly higher temperatures than surrounding rural areas, primarily due to the abundance of heat-absorbing materials like concrete and asphalt, and the lack of natural landscapes. The consequences are more than just uncomfortable: increased energy consumption, higher air pollution, and elevated heat-related illnesses are all serious concerns, particularly in a state like Utah that already experiences hot, dry summers.

In fact, the Utah Climate Center has reported Salt Lake City as one of the top three urban heat island cities in the U.S. Research by the University of Utah has found that Salt Lake County's urban areas can be up to 17 degrees Fahrenheit hotter than nearby rural areas, with some hyper-local hot spots near freeways and in downtown areas experiencing even higher disparities. These elevated temperatures are especially pronounced in neighborhoods with less tree cover and more impervious surfaces, often in historically underserved communities.

But there's a powerful, natural solution literally growing all around us: trees.

Trees play a critical role in mitigating the urban heat island effect through several key mechanisms:

• Shade: This is perhaps the most obvious benefit. Tree canopies directly block solar radiation from reaching impervious surfaces like roads and buildings. This reduces the amount of heat absorbed and re-radiated, keeping surfaces and the air above them cooler. The EPA estimates that shaded surfaces can be 20-45°F cooler than unshaded areas, a crucial difference in Utah's triple-digit summer heat.
• Evapotranspiration: Trees act like natural air conditioners through a process called evapotranspiration. They absorb water through their roots and release it as water vapor into the atmosphere through their leaves. This process converts liquid water into a gas, which requires energy (heat) from the surroundings, thus cooling the air.
• Reduced Energy Consumption: Cooler ambient temperatures mean less reliance on air conditioning. This directly translates to reduced energy consumption in homes and businesses, lessening the load on power grids and decreasing greenhouse gas emissions. In Utah's arid climate, this can also mean significant water savings, as shade from trees can reduce the water needs of underlying grass.
• Improved Air Quality: While not directly mitigating heat, improved air quality is an important co-benefit, especially along the Wasatch Front. Trees filter pollutants from the air, including particulate matter (PM10), which is a persistent air quality challenge in Utah. By reducing the need for energy production, they indirectly contribute to cleaner air, which is often worse in hotter urban environments.
• Enhanced Livability and Well-being: Beyond the scientific benefits, trees simply make urban environments more pleasant. Green spaces encourage outdoor activity, improve mental health, and foster a stronger sense of community. Studies suggest that a 10% increase in tree cover could lead to approximately 50 fewer heat-related deaths per year in Salt Lake City alone.

What Can We Do in Utah?

The good news is that Utah communities are actively working to leverage the power of trees. Urban planning initiatives should continue to prioritize:

• Increased Tree Planting: Salt Lake City, for example, has an initiative to plant at least 1,000 trees on the West Side each year to address historical inequities in tree canopy coverage. 
• Protecting Existing Canopy: Safeguarding mature trees is crucial, as they provide the most significant cooling benefits. Salt Lake City's Urban Forest Action Plan aims to protect and expand the city's tree canopy.
• Water-wise Landscaping: Recognizing Utah's arid climate, planting drought-tolerant and native trees and plants is essential for sustainable urban forestry. St. George has adopted requirements for water-wise landscaping along major public streets, demonstrating this commitment.
• Community Involvement: Programs like those offered by TreeUtah facilitate community tree planting and ecological restoration, empowering residents to be part of the solution.

Trees are more than just beautiful additions to our cities; they are vital infrastructure in the fight against the urban heat island effect, especially in Utah's warming climate. By investing in our urban forests, we can create cooler, healthier, and more sustainable cities for everyone across the Beehive State.

Want to help us grow urban forests in communities across Utah? Consider making a donation to TreeUtah. Every cent goes towards planting trees where they're needed most!

On Easter morning at 6:30 am we gathered in the EcoGarden with Vaughn Lovejoy, TreeUtah veteran of 20 years.  He began with a ceremony in which we sat and watched the sunrise as he read poetry and passages from earth steward savants such as Wendell Berry and Robin Wall Kimmerer.  Vaughn was particularly enthusiastic to share excerpts from Kimmerer’s new book The Serviceberry, which paired perfectly with our Serviceberry planting that morning.  Vaughn spoke with brightness as he touched on how gratitude and reciprocity can become our currency in a gift economy, as Kimmerer emphasizes in her book. 

Vaughn invited us to meditate together on healing with the in-breath, and to meditate on blessings with the out-breath for a few minutes.  As we went through the ceremony, we watched the sky move from deep indigo to heather gray, as soft rose tones warmed the clouds, as well as our hopefulness.  Seagulls made their daily migration across the sky to the next body of water as the sunrise greeted us warmly.  

We gathered around the Serviceberry, not far from the Pink lady apple tree, also with white blossoms.  Vaughn shared that during his TreeUtah career,  he eventually began the practice of allowing each tree planting to be a prayer.  Everyone took a turn to dig the hole.  Then, once the root ball had been sufficiently loosened, I offered Vaughn the mycorrhizae to add to the roots.  It was then that he said with a twinkle in his eye, “Do you remember when Galandriel gives Sam soil from her garden in the Lord of the Rings?”  He of course used this parable to express how mycorrhizae works to enhance the trees ability to uptake nutrients from the soil due to the symbiotic relationship with the fungi and the roots.  

Once we finished with the Serviceberry planting, with everyone’s shared support and doting, folks went on to help plant some Elderberry as well as White currant.  As we completed the tree planting, I realized the magnitude and magic of Vaughn’s legacy in the thousands of trees that he has planted over the years, each one emanating his prayers.  

What an empowering way to make a difference, build community, increase resilience, and ultimately create abundance in the world around us!  This work of planting trees that happens with TreeUtah is a shining example of how we as human beings can invoke ecosystem services, which trees so naturally bestow to other organisms and systems.  By planting trees ritualistically and diligently, we open up the earth, introduce new life forms, and cultivate the promise of more trees and increased habitat, aka homes. 

Much gratitude to Vaughn and everyone that helped out at the Easter Sunrise tree planting!  May this healing continue.  May these blessings multiply.

Trees play a crucial role in maintaining and enhancing water quality in our ecosystems. As natural filters, they mitigate pollution and manage water runoff, significantly contributing to the health of our water bodies. In this blog post, we explore how trees impact water quality and provide solutions to some of the pressing environmental challenges.

The root systems of trees play multiple roles in keeping our waterways healthy. As trees absorb water through their root systems, they filter pollutants such as nitrates, phosphates, and heavy metals from contaminated water before they then re-release that water into the groundwater supply.

Tree roots also help stabilize the soil, preventing erosion and sedimentation in water bodies. Sedimentation can severely affect water quality by introducing excess nutrients and reducing oxygen levels in aquatic environments. By stabilizing the soil, trees are maintaining a healthy balance between the land and aquatic environments. Another part of their stabilizing work is done by reducing surface runoff. This absorption process allows rainwater to percolate slowly into the ground, replenishing groundwater reserves rather than flow down in full force all at once, creating floods and landslides. 

Tree canopies also play their role by shading bodies of water, maintaining the temperature at levels suitable for aquatic life. Temperature regulation is absolutely critical for preserving healthy aquatic habitats, not only to protect wildlife from heat stress, but because the temperature of water dramatically impacts oxygen levels. Cooler water holds more oxygen and in hot climates like ours in Utah, it’s especially important to maintain biodiverse vegetated areas alongside streams and rivers to ensure oxygen levels can continue to support wildlife.

Want to help us maintain healthy waterways in Utah? TreeUtah hosts multiple restoration events each year, both along the waterways themselves and up in our canyon watersheds. Stay up to date on all our tree planting events and help us create a thriving ecosystem by signing up for our event emails here.

The story below was originally published in Utah Stories, an awesome local publication that seeks to produce stories with meaning that help promote and sustain the threads of local community. To check out more of their articles and their multimodal digital content, click here.

It’s a bluebird day on the slopes at Alta, and a group of ten people are gathered at the top of the Sunnyside lift. Instead of skiing through the trees, they’re going to pay the trees a visit. This is Trees and Skis, one of many events hosted by the Alta Environmental Center. 

Ian Peisner from TreeUtah is the group’s leader. He takes them halfway down the Crooked Mile run until he reaches a small clump of subalpine firs and Engelmann spruce. Here he stops, and in his friendly engaging way, Peisner starts to tell the group about these trees: How to identify them by bark, needle, and cone, and how they’ve been cultivated for the good of skiers and the good of the mountain. 

“In a lot of places, the trees were cut away to make the ski runs,” Peisner says. “But at Alta, the trees were planted to make the ski runs.” 

The silver miners in the town of Alta had cut down all the timber for building materials, making devastating avalanches common. When the mining boom was over, the Forest Service hired men for a Civilian Conservation Corps project to replant trees so a ski area could be created. 

Alta still operates on public lands leased from the Forest Service. The Alta Environmental Center was created in 2008 to help protect this land and support the ski area’s sustainability efforts. Tours are free and are designed to share all aspects of Alta history and ecology, like Alta’s importance to the watershed.

“People are always surprised to learn that this is our drinking water,” says Lisa Runyon, referring to the snow underfoot. Runyon is a volunteer naturalist Ranger who co-hosts the Ski With a Ranger tours. Rangers are trained by the Cottonwood Canyons Foundation, a non-political non-profit specifically focused on watershed protection and education. Skiers stopping by the Albion Day Lodge on a mid-morning break might see volunteers staffing a table with photos of local animals like snowshoe hare, ermine, ptarmigan, and Alta’s famous porcupine. They’ll also discover tracking signs to look for, including fur, footprints, and scat. 

Later that afternoon, on the Ski With a Ranger tour, Runyon leads the group right to several sets of animal tracks. “Even though you’re here to ski, there’s a lot of other life going on in the canyon,” she reminds them.

Visitors who choose the Snowshoe with a Naturalist tour will absorb a lesson in Alta’s ecology and geology while hiking up the currently snowy Summer Road at the very end of Little Cottonwood Canyon. This year, thanks to a generous corporate grant covering the price of snowshoe rentals, children from several Salt Lake area schools will also get to participate. 

Journey Through Historical Snowscapes focuses on Alta’s history as a silver mining town and its colorful founding fathers, like George Watson, who had bought up all the silver mining claims but was too broke to pay the taxes. He donated his claims to the Forest Service to make Alta ski area and named himself Alta’s mayor.

“I think that a big part of Alta culture is understanding and holding onto the traditions,” says  Jennifer Melton, Director of the Alta Environmental Center. She notes that some of the most important and  colorful figures of American ski history made their lives here, skiing steep routes in leather boots and unsophisticated wooden skis, and wearing layers of wool and cotton, not Gore-Tex. Their stories continue to be told on Alta’s historical tours. 

Melton wants people to come up and experience Alta. “It’s just such a special and unique place,” she says. “If you’re new or don’t know a lot about the canyon or what there is to do outside of skiing, join some of our events on snowshoes. Come out with a sense of curiosity and learn something new.”

A group of guests on the ski lift are certainly impressed. They’re in the middle of a Birding on Skis tour and universally exclaim how surprised they are at the number of birds they’ve seen. The leader of their tour, Bryant Olson, is a conservation ecologist from Tracy Aviary. On this tour, he staked out spots by the bird feeders and called in Mountain chickadees and Red-breasted nuthatches.

Alta Environmental Center tours are free and run from January through mid-April. Ski-based tours require a lift ticket. Snowshoe-based tours are totally free — just bring your gear. Rentals are also available at the Alta Ski Shop in the Albion Day Lodge. Check the website for registration and parking information. Winter activities wrap up with a big celebration on Alta Earth Day, April 12. 

The Alta Environmental Center hopes that an interest in their winter programming will spark an interest in their summer programming as well. Replanting trees is important because small saplings often sprout up on the runs where they’ll be pummeled by skiers and snow grooming machines. To give them a better chance of survival, TreeUtah harvests saplings and takes them to an on-site nursery where they are cared for by Alta Environmental Center staff until replanting. The public is welcome to participate in hiking, tree-planting, restoration and weed-pulling when the snow melts.

After a long, cold Winter, the days are getting longer and the weather is getting warmer, but how can you tell when Spring has officially arrived? We still have some weeks to go before the seasons change, but here are some signs we can keep our eyes peeled for as the season of renewal approaches!

Throughout the year, the TreeUtah team finds a simple joy in observing the changes in trees as the seasons unfold. One of the first signs of Spring is the appearance of new growth on trees as they exit their Winter-long dormant phases. The most noticeable indicator of this growth is the swelling of buds. As the Winter comes to a close, you’ll notice little green nodes appear along the branches of trees - these are the buds. Buds are the small, undeveloped leaves or flowers that are protected by scales during the winter. As the weather warms up, the buds begin to swell and eventually burst open, revealing new leaves or flowers.

The type of tree that is the first to show signs of spring varies depending on the climate. In warmer climates, the first trees to bloom are usually the fruit trees, such as cherry and plum trees. In colder climates, the first trees to bloom are usually the deciduous trees, such as maple and birch trees.

Beneath the surface of trees, some unseen changes are also taking place. As the temperature oscillates between freezing and warm temperatures in the late Winter and early Spring, sap begins to run. This sap helps transport nutrients to support new springtime growth, like the buds. In addition to nutrients, the sap carries hormones that control growth and prompt the tree to react to environmental triggers, ensuring each part of the tree is responding to environmental factors synchronously. These hormones help a tree grow according to the resources available.

In addition to temperature changes, another key signal for trees to exit their dormancy is the length of daily sunlight, also known as the photoperiod. Trees sense this through photoreceptors called phytochromes. As the phytochromes receive more sunlight, they become active. As they become more active, hormonal changes occur in the tree that signal it is time to grow and reproduce. 

Much like the trees, TreeUtah’s activity changes with the seasons. During the Winter months, we’ve been busy planning ahead for the Spring 2025 planting season. We’re eager for temps to go up, so that we can get back out in the field to plant trees with our community! One sign that it’s time to get back to planting are those buds we mentioned earlier, so just know that when you see those little green nodes, our planting events will be following close behind. 

In the meantime, check out our events calendar to see what fun adventures we’ve got scheduled for the remainder of Winter!

“At Stanley 1913, one of our core values is to build a more sustainable, less disposable life and world,” said Matt Navarro, global president, Stanley 1913. “We’re proud to team with the Utah Jazz to be the first to offer our coveted, reusable Quencher made from recycled stainless steel at a sporting event arena, emphasizing our joint commitment to helping protect and preserve our planet. We look forward to supporting both the Jazz and Stanley 1913 communities’ interest in living a more sustainable lifestyle.”   

Today, the Utah Jazz announced plans to launch a first-of-its-kind program that allows fans to bring a designated Mountain Purple Jazz co-branded 40 oz Stanley(R) Quencher(R) H2.0 FlowState™ Tumbler in and out of Delta Center – and enjoy $3 non-alcoholic beverage refills – setting a new sustainability benchmark for the fan experience in professional sports. This offering is a part of the team’s multi-year partnership with Stanley 1913, the innovative food and drinkware brand.

For every steal a Utah Jazz player achieves during the 2024-25 season, Stanley will donate $19.13 – an amount chosen to honor their founding year – to TreeUtah! 

TreeUtah is honored to be included in part of this awesome effort to reduce waste at the Delta Center. It's with collaborative efforts like this, with multiple organizations working together towards a better future, that we're able to make a significant impact. The only thing better than getting a cool new cup is knowing that cool new cup is actively contributing to the betterment of your community through waste reduction and by supporting the growth of our urban forests! 

Learn more about this collaborative partnership by clicking here!

In urban and wild environments, living trees play an essential part in sustain a healthy ecosystem. We rely on trees to maintain our water supply, clean our air, and provide a safe habitat. These benefits are well-known among all tree lovers and they’re a big part of why we’re so passionate about bringing trees to communities across Utah. Did you know the benefits of trees extend past their living years? Dead trees (snags) and downed logs continue to be an important resource for wildlife.

Whether they’re upright or toppled, dead trees continue to play a role in the cycle of life in the ecosystems in which they’re situated. It’s estimated that up to two thirds of all wildlife species rely on downed trees for some aspect of their life cycle. The decaying surface of a snag acts as a growth substrate for many species of fungus, moss, and lichen. Moths, worms, beetles, and snails use spaces under the bark as shelter or a place for foraging. Birds enjoy these hotspots of small invertebrates as a reliable source for food. Primary cavity nesters, such as woodpeckers, prefer the softwood of snags for nesting and secondary cavity nesters use these abandoned holes for their own nests in the next season. These cavities also serve as dens and food storage for small mammals, like squirrels or even bats. 

In addition to their benefit as a primary resource for living creatures, dead trees contribute to the cycle of life by cycling nutrients back into the soil. Decomposers, like fungi and snails, help break down the snags as they decay. As the organic matter breaks down into its component parts, it releases nutrients such as nitrogen, potassium, and phosphorus into the soil that go on to nourish plants and other organisms in the ecosystem, including saplings. In effect, these dead trees act as mulch for a growing forest.

Dead trees also continue to play an essential part in helping us fight climate change. Even after a tree dies, the carbon dioxide absorbed while it was living remains trapped in its wood. Dead wood accounts for up to 50% of the carbon currently stored in forests. Their slow, natural decay means this carbon will remain sequestered for years, cycling through the ecosystem at a manageable pace and ensuring the ecosystem remains stable.

While we’re certainly not going to be going out to the forest to create more snags (planting new trees is more fun and makes way more sense), we feel it’s important to take a moment to appreciate the beauty of trees in all stages of their life. As little saplings, as towering giants, and as eroding snags, trees play an incredible role in our ecosystem.

Want to help us create a strong ecosystem? Join us at our tree planting events this Fall! 

Stay up to date on all our events by signing up for our emails by clicking here.

Temperatures today are soaring to 105ºF in Utah's capital city, to over 115ºF in St. George, and the whole state is under an excessive heat warning that extends to Saturday night. In the midst of this heatwave, we're feeling extra grateful for the cooling power of trees. While concrete, roads, and metal absorb and re-emit heat, trees provide substantial relief from the heat by both providing shade and cooling through evapotranspiration. A healthy urban forest is one of our greatest tools in reducing the heat island effect generated by our concrete jungle.

Urban heat islands are caused by a lack of cooling abiotic factors in an environment in addition to abundant human activity. Although minimally perceptible on a small scale, the heat generated by individuals driving, using machinery, or even just jogging builds up, leading to a significant heat increase in the local area. In densely populated urban areas, the heat generated by just living our day-to-day lives with the heat trapped by urban structures accumulates, creating a sweltering heat zone.

Cities overall are much hotter than surrounding rural areas, because of comparably higher levels of human activity and lower square-footage of green space. Within cities too, there are areas that have far fewer trees, which leads to even higher temperatures than the rest of the city. This phenomenon is immediately noticeable in Salt Lake City, where shaded areas - like Sugar House or Capitol Hill - feel notably cooler than areas with fewer trees – like Rose Park or Poplar Grove. Although the difference in temperature in these areas might only be a couple degrees, this seemingly small increase in temperature is drastic, especially when the daily temps are reaching the triple digits. With only a 2° increase, energy demands can increase up to 9%, leading to higher energy costs and more pollution.

By growing the urban forest and minimizing these barren, extreme heat zones, we all benefit. We all benefit from lowering temperatures within the cityscape, reducing energy use, and creating welcoming spaces for us all to enjoy year-round. In addition to creating an overall more inviting city for us all to enjoy, we can help protect our neighbors from heat-related illness, keep our waterways clean, and reduce pollution – all by planting more trees. With Salt Lake City’s increased efforts to plant more trees on the West Side and TreeUtah’s partnerships with community organizations in areas in need of more trees, the city’s urban forest will continue to grow and, hopefully, help our community thrive equitably.

Want to help us reduce the heat island effect by bringing trees to neighborhoods in need? Make a donation today by clicking here.

Do you have a car sitting in your driveway that's less than road-worthy? Are you looking for a way to declutter your life and give back to the environment? Donate your old car to TreeUtah through https://careasy.org/nonprofit/treeutah

By donating your car to TreeUtah, you’re turning cars into trees! CARS will accept most vehicles, running or not. As long as it’s in one piece, has an engine, and towable, they’ll be able to take your old vehicle at no cost to you.

The TreeUtah staff got hands-on experience with the process when we retired our well-used Ford Ranger (RIP) back in 2022 and we can confirm they make the donation process as easy as taking the trash out. In fact, it might be even easier. Then, we got a check in the mail not long after and bought some trees!

How it Works

CARS has partnered with reputable car donation organizations across the country, making the donation process quick and hassle-free. Here's how it works:

Easy Online Donation: Visit the charity donation page by clicking here and the user-friendly platform will guide you through the process. After getting started with your donation online, a rep will get in touch to coordinate towing.

Free Towing: You won't have to worry about towing your car – the donation program arranges for free pickup from nearly anywhere in Utah.

Benefit TreeUtah: The proceeds from your tax-deductible donation will go directly to TreeUtah, helping fund awesome tree planting events, educational opportunities, and statewide environmental stewardship.

CARS is intent on turning any vehicle into funds to support good causes, so they do their best to accept any possible vehicle running or not, including cars, trucks, trailers, boats, RVs, motorcycles, campers, off-road vehicles, planes, heavy equipment, and farm machinery. Chances are pretty good that they’ll be able to take any rust bucket you’ve got, but give them a call to check, if you have any concerns!

While this inventive way of donating to nonprofits is exciting and convenient, not everyone has an old vehicle to donate. There are many ways to help support our mission, including good ol’ monetary donations, the donation of physical items (gloves, tarps, buckets, etc.), or by joining us at one of our volunteer tree planting events! Whatever you’ve got to give, we’re grateful for it and so are the neighbors whose streets you’re making greener by helping us make Utah a more tree-filled place.

To learn more about ways to give, visit TreeUtah.org/give

In 2022, the contiguous U.S. experienced concerning stretches of drought. For us in the West, the state of Utah included, peak drought coverage reached 91.3% of the region. 2023 brought slight reprieve to areas of the country with higher than average levels of precipitation, like we experienced in Utah (the ’22-’23 ski season was awesome), but Northern and Southern regions of the country experienced record-breaking heat and dryness. Overall, Summer 2023 was the warmest on record in North America and it looks like we have another warm, dry Summer ahead in 2024. We’re all taking steps to do our part to conserve water and many are wondering… would cutting down trees help us save water?

Our answer won’t be surprising. No, cutting down trees will not help save water. Slowing down with our tree plantings won’t help save water either. Since 1988, we’ve organized community tree planting events throughout the state of Utah in an effort to increase our urban forests, bring trees to communities that have been historically marginalized, and bring communities together. We plant trees with our changing climate in mind, knowing the benefits trees provide will aid our community for generations, especially with an increasingly dry climate.

As, Ben Abbott, a Professor of Ecosystem Ecology at BYU, said when asked about this issue, “The trees aren't just straws that are consuming water. They also are shading the ground, so they're reducing the amount of sunlight that's hitting the snowpack, so that can extend the length of time that we have snow on the ground.”

By slowing the snowmelt, water is gradually introduced to our water supply rather than evaporating or surface runoff. We are also only able to store so much water, so we need the snow to melt slowly in order to create a steady supply of water, both for our reservoirs and natural waterways.

Abbott continued, “If you get into a relatively dry environment like we have here in Utah… you can have no increase, or even a decrease in water, when you remove those trees.”

Once trees are established, their water needs are modest. Mature trees will absorb between 10 - 150 gallons of water per day, but trees only retain a maximum of 5% of that water for plant growth. This means 95% of the water “consumed” by trees is released back into the environment. 

Trees are key for saving water and preventing water pollution. Their interception of rainwater and subsequent filtering, transpiration, and groundwater charge make trees a vital part of the water cycle. 

Tree roots filter pollutants from storm runoff that would otherwise end up in lakes, rivers, and streams. Around 180 million people in the U.S. rely on forests to filter their drinking water and Utah is among them. The majority of our drinking water comes from precipitation, snow in our mountains that melts and filters through our forested mountains before making its way to our homes. The same work is done by trees in urban areas. Trees capture water, filter it, and release it back into the water supply, which sustains our communities and our state’s iconic natural features, like the Great Salt Lake.

Trees are also essential in preserving soil quality and flood prevention. Their deep roots hold soil in place,  preventing erosion. They also absorb and store rainwater, reducing runoff and sediment deposit after storms. By preventing erosion and storing rainwater, trees reduce flood risk. Flooding is Utah’s most common and destructive natural hazard, making the flood-mitigating benefits of trees invaluable. Healthy soil is also essential in preserving our groundwater supply, which feeds our tributaries and the Great Salt Lake itself. Without healthy soil, a great percentage of the water that comes to Utah in the form of precipitation would evaporate before making it to our waterways, significantly cutting the volume of water that makes it to our homes and to the lake.

In addition to preventing floods and aiding water management, trees enhance air quality, reduce the urban heat island effect, reduce energy consumption, and make our communities more comfortable, safer places to live. It’s worth noting that cities and towns in Utah use only 9% of our available water supply. This includes water used for the maintenance of trees. We all want to do our part in easing drought conditions and increasing the amount of water that makes it to our beautifully unique Great Salt Lake, but the answer is not to cut down trees. In fact, having more trees will do more to increase the efficacy of the regional water cycle, ensuring a healthy supply of water both for us, regional wildlife, and the lake.

The annual Tree ID Snowshoe Hike at Wasatch Mountain State Park was a delightful highlight this winter with Tree Utah!  Blue skies and sunshine held the event gracefully, accented by picturesque views of the Wasatch range.  People of all ages and backgrounds strapped on their snowshoes, teamed up into pods, and tramped through the fluffy snow as they looked for their corresponding labeled trees.  While embarking upon tree identification in the winter provides its own unique challenges, it is also an enriching and informative process reminding us of nature’s profound resilience.  

We encountered many different tree species native to Utah such as Chokecherry, Rocky Mountain juniper, Quaking aspen, Narrow leaf cottonwood, Hawthorn, and many more.  We also enjoyed the secretive sounds of mountain streams trickling over rocks beneath mounds of snow and ice as we steadily carved a packed trail with our snowshoes. 

Arborists and other experts from Tree Utah shared important information about trees along the way to deepen our understanding of the surrounding ecology.  Black hawthorn Crataegus douglasii was one of the many trees that we learned about.  It is native to North America and occurs throughout north western regions in forests, mountains, along streams, as well as open, dry areas.

Black hawthorn is a compact shrub-like tree in the Rosaceae family that grows slowly and prefers full sun.  The alternating leaves are oval and serrated while the branches present thorns that can reach up to 2 cm in length.   In the spring Black hawthorn blooms white flowers having five petals with multiple styles and stamens.  It is pollinated by many kinds of insects including bees, beetles, as well as wind.  

Black hawthorn produces small fruit about 1 cm across that vary in color from red to dark purple (almost black) as they mature.  The fruit has 3-5 small seeds which contain cyanide.  Black hawthorn fruit has been used by many Native American tribes and is an important food source to wildlife such as birds, bears, deer, rodents, and insect larvae.  The thickets of hawthorn provide protection and habitat for wildlife as well.  It is said that hawthorn can help heal a broken heart and is used in western herbalism.

Learning about tree species such as Black hawthorn with Tree Utah at Wasatch Mountain State Park this winter was rewarding and deepened a stronger sense of ecology and belonging in this unique region.  Knowing that winter’s temporary dormancy will soon be broken with pulsing growth and life brings much hope and anticipation for spring.   Many more educational events and opportunities are on the horizon at Tree Utah as tree planting season approaches!

About the Author

Donda enjoys planting trees, doing events and writing for Tree Utah which is in direct alignment with her nature ethos.  She is also the author, owner, and creator of Bee Curious, https://www.beecurious.bio/ which she produced as a result of her inclinations to explore, discover, and wonder into the phenomenon of nature.  Donda is a teacher, gardener, hiker, journalist, herbalist, biomimic, photographer, cook, dancer, biker, and lover of nature.  She enjoys facilitating, collaborating, and celebrating in people following their curiosity for the simple sake of loving to learn and connecting with nature.

Throughout the Summer months, the heat is a common topic of conversation, especially with the record-breaking temperatures worldwide in July. July 2023 was Earth’s hottest month on record and we could certainly feel it! Salt Lake City’s average high throughout July was 98.3ºF, which is more than 4 degrees over its historical average, making it the third hottest July on record. It was the hottest July on record in St. George, with an average daytime high of 107.5ºF. Illustrating the reality and dangers of the relentless heatwave down south, the park rangers at Zion National Park made a viral video baking cookies on a vehicle dashboard. The heat in July was relentless and with our ACs cranked up to match, our utility bills rose with the heat. Hot Summers like this are guaranteed in our future and so are the matching utility bills. As we all make an effort to stay cool in the Summer without breaking the bank, here’s a tip to help you out - plant trees!

The most unusual thing about July 2023 according to John Cecava, a National Weather Service meteorologist based in Salt Lake City, is that temperatures remained so steady from day to night.Overnight lows in Utah were much higher than usual. Without that drop in temperatures at night, ACs, swamp coolers, and fans all across Utah were running 24/7. As resilient as Utahns are, we’re still only human and we’ve gotta stay cool. One thing we can do to save money while staying cool is to plant trees. 

Trees provide relief from the heat through shade and evapotranspiration. The same relief trees provide us while we’re enjoying the outdoors on a hot day can benefit us in our homes. Shaded surfaces may be between 20-45ºF cooler than unshaded materials. This is a staggering difference that can be applied to directly to our homes by planting trees in ideal locations. Large deciduous trees planted on the East, West, and Northwest sides make the biggest difference, reducing Summer air conditioning costs by up to 35%. Even a home that’s shaded just 50% throughout the day will see its air conditioning costs reduced by $20/month on average.

Planting trees to shade other areas of the property makes a big difference too! If you have an outdoor AC unit, you can also plant a tree in a spot where it’ll provide shade for the unit itself, keeping it cool and allowing it run as efficiently as possible. While some people have opted to plant shrubs around their units, this unfortunately impedes the airflow and restricts efficiency. By planting trees to shade AC units instead, airflow is unrestricted. It’s also helpful to create shade over surfaces that radiate heat, like driveways and sidewalks. By reducing their exposure to direct sunlight, we can reduce the radiant heat effect and keep ambient temperatures as low as possible.

By planting trees around your home, you’re also helping the whole community. Temperatures in well-shaded areas are on average 2.9ºF cooler than those with limited shade. Planting trees is one of the best ways to decrease the urban heat island effect and any additions to our urban forest will go a long way in bringing temperatures down for everyone in the neighborhood. When you contribute to the growth and stewardship of our urban canopy, you’re not only going to find lower utility bills, you’ll also find a happier, greener community.

In the fiery heat of Summer, shade-providing trees are a sought-after resource. They provide us with relief from the heat and they lower overall temperatures in the immediate area. While concrete, roads, and metal absorb and re-emit heat, trees provide substantial relief from the heat by both providing shade and cooling through evapotranspiration. A healthy urban forest is one of our greatest tools in reducing the heat island effect generated by our concrete jungle.

Urban heat islands are caused by a lack of cooling abiotic factors in an environment in addition to abundant human activity. Although minimally perceptible on a small scale, the heat generated by individuals driving, using machinery, or even just jogging builds up, leading to a significant heat increase in the local area. In densely populated urban areas, the heat generated by just living our day-to-day lives with the heat trapped by urban structures accumulates, creating a sweltering heat zone.

Cities overall are much hotter than surrounding rural areas, because of comparably higher levels of human activity and lower square-footage of greenspace. Within cities too, there are areas that have far fewer trees, which leads to even higher temperatures than the rest of the city. This phenomenon is immediately noticeable in Salt Lake City, where shaded areas - like Sugar House or Capitol Hill - feel notably cooler than areas with fewer trees – like Rose Park or Poplar Grove. Although the difference in temperature in these areas might only be a couple degrees, this seemingly small increase in temperature is drastic, especially when the daily temps are reaching the triple digits. With only a 2° increase, energy demands can increase up to 9%, leading to higher energy costs and more pollution.

By growing the urban forest and minimizing these barren, extreme heat zones, we all benefit. We all benefit from lowering temperatures within the cityscape, reducing energy use, and creating welcoming spaces for us all to enjoy year-round. In addition to creating an overall more inviting city for us all to enjoy, we can help protect our neighbors from heat-related illness, keep our waterways clean, and reduce pollution – all by planting more trees. With Salt Lake City’s increased efforts to plant more trees on the West Side and TreeUtah’s partnerships with community organizations in areas in need of more trees, the city’s urban forest will continue to grow and, hopefully, help our community thrive equitably.

"The Man Who Planted Trees" by Jean Giono is a short story about a shepherd named Elzeard Bouffier who lives in a desolate valley in the French Alps and decides to single-handedly reforest the valley. The story offers a hopeful message about the power of patient, dedicated efforts to create a better world. This hopeful message is perhaps why so many people believed the fictional shepherd to be a real historical figure - why wouldn't one want to believe in such a beautiful story? Alas, it is just a story. Giono responded to the mistaken belief of the shepherd as a historical figure by saying, "I am sorry to disappoint you, but Elzeard Bouffier is an invented character. The aim was to encourage love for trees, or, more exactly, to stir the love to plant trees (which has always been one of my dearest ideas)." Giono's story has indeed planted the seed for a love of trees in many people. Although Bouffier might not be real, this message of a love for planting trees has inspired many to plant trees throughout their own communities, making this story truly come alive. 

In 1987, the story was adapted into a short animated film directed by Frédéric Back and narrated by Christopher Plummer, which you can watch below. Enjoy ♥

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By taking a quick glance out the window, it’s easy to see that we’re in for a cold and wet spring this year. This April we still have some rainy, and possibly snowy, days forecasted ahead, before it gradually warms into the 70’s in May. The moisture is much needed, but make sure to check on your trees as there are a few diseases to watch for in a spring season such as this one. These diseases can be spread by wind and rain and are prevalent in extended cool, wet weather.

Here are a few to look out for:

Bacterial Blight

Bacterial blight, also referred to as blossom blight or shoot blight, is a disease that occurs when bacteria enter the leaves of a plant and release a toxin that inhibits chlorophyll production. Symptoms of this disease are water-soaked areas that develop into dry, brown leaf spots with yellow-green “halos” surrounding the lesion. If you suspect your tree has bacterial blight, prune the diseased branches 10 to 12 inches below the visible symptoms and discard them. Be sure to disinfect your shears after pruning (using bleach solution or alcohol) to prevent the bacteria’s spread to other areas.

The leaves of a plant infected with bacterial blight

Aspen Leaf Spot

Aspen leaf spot, also known as ink spot or black leaf spot, is a fungal disease that, of course, primarily affects aspens, but can also target other trees within the same family, such as willows. At the onset of this disease, areas of the leaf surface begin to turn brown. Eventually, the entire leaf may turn yellow-ish brown and raised, black spots—hence the term “ink spots”— appear. To treat a tree with aspen leaf spot, completely dispose of all affected leaves and use a protective fungicide. Pruning lower branches can also help prevent your trees from developing aspen leaf spot because it allows for air circulation.

Leaves from an infected aspen

Anthracnose

Anthracnose diseases are caused by several fungal species and target sycamores and other shade trees. Symptoms vary among fungal species and the host tree affected, but typically include brown leaf spots, distortion and curing of leaves, and early leaf drop. These diseases are often more of a nuisance than a serious threat, so treatment by fungicide is only needed if a tree has suffered from anthracnose for multiple years, losing its leaves each time. 

Leaves of a plant suffering from an anthracnose infection

So, keep an eye out this spring season to catch these diseases early. But remember, these are just a few diseases to be aware of; the best way to ensure your trees are healthy is to familiarize yourself with species-specific growth patterns and watch out for any irregularities.

Happy National Donut Day!

As neighbors have been planting new green in their yards throughout the Spring, you might have noticed these tree rings or tree donuts. These tools can be helpful while a young tree gets established after being planted. They can help prevent underwatering or even overwatering, because the bag serves as an exact measurement of how much water the tree is getting. Tree donuts are also very helpful for saving water by ensuring all the water is served directly to the tree’s roots. 

Although these donuts are helpful, they’re only meant to be used for a period of 2-3 months at a time and, of course, aren’t much help during the Winter when temperatures are below freezing. These donuts also aren’t going to tell us exactly how much water a tree is going to need. Generally, a young tree should receive around 20 gallons of water a week while it’s getting established in the first 1-2 years after being planted. However, this varies depending on the tree species. Always research a tree’s needs before putting a care plan in action and remember to consider other factors too, such as seasonal temperatures, drought conditions, and even soil composition. Each of these factors will influence how much water a tree will need for success. 

A good test to see if a tree needs water is to poke a long screwdriver into the soil. If it’s hard to push in and there’s no soil sticking to the shaft, the soil is dry and the tree should be watered. If the screwdriver is relatively to push into the soil and it has particles sticking to it when pulled out, that could be a good indicator that the soil is saturated. You could also dig a narrow trench about 2-4” deep to feel the soil yourself. The soil should be moist, but not wet and certainly not muddy. Even when using tools like tree donuts for watering, it’s a good idea to check the soil saturation yourself to ensure the tree is getting what it needs, especially as temperatures change with the season. Adjustments will need to be made to ensure the tree isn’t getting too much or too little.

As great as donuts are, they’re not the only option for watering trees. If possible, using a soaker hose or routing drip lines to the tree is a great option for keeping them hydrated. You can also make DIY watering devices by making your own watering bag or by drilling holes into a 5-gallon bucket and setting it next to the tree (be mindful of water evaporation - it’s best to put a lid on the bucket). Tree watering systems like this are fantastic and go a long way in helping trees thrive, but the ultimate responsibility is on each of us to monitor soil saturation levels and water accordingly.

For more tree care tips, visit our care tips page by clicking here.

Utah residents are no strangers to the duality of snow: delightful and inconvenient, beautiful and sloppy, whimsical and destructive. After a heavy snowfall, it's inevitable that trees around town will lose some limbs. How do we know when a tree can survive the snow-caused damage?

The loss of minor limbs is typically no issue - as long as enough strong limbs remain on the otherwise healthy tree, it should recover easily. A mature, healthy shade tree can usually survive the loss of even a major limb. The youngest of trees can survive significant damage - as long as the lead branch and trunk are intact, a young tree should recover easily. Whether young or old, a tree can use your help in its recovery process by pruning broken branches and repairing rough edges around wounds. With your help, the tree's natural wound repair response will go as smoothly as possible.

With heavier damage, it can be more difficult to assess. A tree that has lost a major portion of its small branches or a mature tree that has lost several major limbs might be able to survive despite the major trauma. In such cases, it's best to get advice from a professional arborist, the closest thing we have to tree doctors, who can assess the potential for survival. An arborist will be able to assess which branches should be pruned and which should be kept so the tree can produce enough food for itself through the next growing season. 

Sadly, there are situations when a tree will not be able to recover. If the trunk is splitting, the tree has lost too many branches to hold adequate foliage for survival in the spring, or all that's left is the trunk, it's time to say goodbye and plant a new tree in its place.

For a helpful visual guide courtesy of the Arbor Day Foundation, click here.

Originally published in 1902, Florence Holbrook's The Book of Nature Myths is filled with pleasant fictions about the natural world, from "The Story of the First Ants" to "Why the Parrot Repeats the Words of Men." Each short story is a delight and with the Winter season upon us in full force, we wanted to share one of our favorite Winter stories from Holbrook's collection, "Why the Evergreen Trees Keep their Leaves in Winter." For a wonderfully narrated audio version of this story, scroll to the bottom and follow the link!

Why the Evergreen Trees Keep their Leaves in Winter

By Florence Holbrook

One day, a long, long time ago, it was very cold; winter was coming. And all the birds flew away to the warm south, to wait for the spring. But one little bird had a broken wing and could not fly. He did not know what to do. He looked all round, to see if there was any place where he could keep warm. And he saw the trees of the great forest.

“Perhaps the trees will keep me warm through the winter,” he said.

So he went to the edge of the forest, hopping and fluttering with his broken wing. The first tree he came to was a slim silver birch.

“Beautiful birch-tree,” he said, “will you let me live in your warm branches until the springtime comes?”

“Dear me!” said the birch-tree, “what a thing to ask! I have to take care of my own leaves through the winter; that is enough for me. Go away.”

The little bird hopped and fluttered with his broken wing until he came to the next tree. It was a great, big oak-tree.

“O big oak-tree,” said the little bird, “will you let me live in your warm branches until the springtime comes?”

“Dear me,” said the oak-tree, “what a thing to ask! If you stay in my branches all winter you will be eating my acorns. Go away.”

So the little bird hopped and fluttered with his broken wing till he came to the willow-tree by the edge of the brook.

“O beautiful willow-tree,” said the little bird, “will you let me live in your warm branches until the springtime comes?”

“No, indeed,” said the willow-tree; “I never speak to strangers. Go away.”

The poor little bird did not know where to go; but he hopped and fluttered along with his broken wing. Presently the spruce-tree saw him, and said, “Where are you going, little bird?”

“I do not know,” said the bird; “the trees will not let me live with them, and my wing is broken so that I cannot fly.”

“You may live on one of my branches,” said the spruce; “here is the warmest one of all.”

“But may I stay all winter?”

“Yes,” said the spruce; “I shall like to have you.”

The pine-tree stood beside the spruce, and when he saw the little bird hopping and fluttering with his broken wing, he said, “My branches are not very warm, but I can keep the wind off because I am big and strong.”

So the little bird fluttered up into the warm branch of the spruce, and the pine-tree kept the wind off his house; then the juniper-tree saw what was going on, and said that she would give the little bird his dinner all the winter, from her branches. Juniper berries are very good for little birds.

The little bird was very comfortable in his warm nest sheltered from the wind, with juniper berries to eat.

The trees at the edge of the forest remarked upon it to each other:

“I wouldn’t take care of a strange bird,” said the birch.

“I wouldn’t risk my acorns,” said the oak.

“I would not speak to strangers,” said the willow. And the three trees stood up very tall and proud.

That night the North Wind came to the woods to play. He puffed at the leaves with his icy breath, and every leaf he touched fell to the ground. He wanted to touch every leaf in the forest, for he loved to see the trees bare.

“May I touch every leaf?” he said to his father, the Frost King.

“No,” said the Frost King, “the trees which were kind to the bird with the broken wing may keep their leaves.”

So North Wind had to leave them alone, and the spruce, the pine, and the juniper-tree kept their leaves through all the winter. And they have done so ever since.

For the audio version, click here.

The arctic brings to mind visions of barren, white, ice-laden tundras and intense snow storms, nary a leaf in sight. A harsh landscape with minimal resources for survival - but still a vibrant ecosystem called home by organisms big and small, including arctic hares, polar bears, flowers, and even trees! 

Although trees in the arctic don’t reach heights as grand as elsewhere in the world, they are still there, providing the same benefits to the land and its inhabitants as they do anywhere else. Their roots help precent erosion, their branches provide shelter for wildlife, and their leaves carry nutrients that are essential for certain animals’ survival. Tree species in the arctic include alder, birch, juniper, and willows. 

Arctic willows are the hardiest of the bunch, growing in the broadest range of environmental conditions. The tree is incredibly adaptable, tolerating droughts, urban pollution, occasional flooding, and any soil type - a hardcore survivor. In the harshest conditions, the tree might only grow up to six inches tall, cementing its status as a dwarf species. When conditions are right, however, the tree can grow up to 5 feet tall with a spread of 7 feet. Its amazing adaptability has enabled the tree to become the northernmost woody plant in the world, with its natural habitat extending far above the tree line all the way to the north coast of Greenland. You can also find the tree growing in the wild further south in the Sierra Nevadas and in the Rocky Mountains.

While the tree’s natural habitat doesn’t extend into the Utah valleys, the Arctic willow can be used in home landscaping in the northern areas of Utah. Its low profile and dense branches make it a perfect addition to live wind barriers to protect homes from winter winds.

In addition to its utility in home landscaping, the Arctic willow has been used in several ways by the Inuit and Gwich’in for generations. The plant has been used for medicinal purposes, such as relieving toothaches, curing indigestion, and as a poultice on wounds. It is also a valuable food source for those living in the Bathurst Inlet area. Especially as a source for vitamin C which, as you can imagine, is hard to come by in the arctic. One young leaf from the Arctic Willow contains 7 - 10 times more vitamin C than an orange! The soft insides of young shoots are also an essential source of fiber. The tree is also an essential food source for the Arctic woolly bear moth, whose larvae depend entirely on Arctic willows as their primary food source.

Trees are essential components of ecosystems, even in the harsh ecosystems like the arctic. Without them, our planet couldn’t support the vibrant, thriving life that exists today. To learn more about the benefits of trees in our urban ecosystem, click here.

Trees are essential pieces of our community spaces. They improve our lives by cleaning our air, cleaning our water, providing shade, lowering temperatures in the summer, and lowering our utility bills in the winter by blocking wind. They are, of course, also beautiful - standing tall, adding to the rich scenery of our community. However, distribution of trees within communities is often inequitable. Neighborhoods with greater socioeconomic advantages are lined with them, while tree coverage is often sparse in poorer neighborhoods. These poorer neighborhoods are left without the benefits that trees can provide.

On average, wealthier neighborhoods have 15% more tree coverage. In the Summer, wealthier neighborhoods are on average 3ºF cooler than poor neighborhoods, making them much more comfortable places to live, work, and play. All year round, these neighborhoods also benefit from cleaner air and a more vibrant urban landscape. Children in wealthier neighborhoods have more areas where they can play safely and they are far less likely to develop childhood asthma, thanks to the protection offered by vegetative diversity.

This inequitable distribution of trees is in part a result of redlining, an effort in the early- to mid-1900s to curb investments and economic growth in certain urban areas due to their racial makeup. Redlining has resulted in decades of ongoing disadvantage, leaving generations of people within these communities with the responsibility of playing catch-up without much-needed support.

As shown by the Tree Equity Score mapping tool created by the national nonprofit American Forests, Salt Lake City’s neighborhoods with the greatest need for support in getting more trees planted are mostly on the west side. This aligns with Salt Lake City’s history of redlining - the majority of redlined neighborhoods were located on the west side of the city. The same is found in Ogden - neighborhoods in the northwest portion of the city are both the ones the are in most need of trees and were historically redlined.

These inequities are the reason for TreeUtah’s dedication to environmental justice. We want to plant trees where they’re needed most, so these underserved communities can experience the same benefits trees have brought to wealthier neighborhoods for decades. Why plant trees where they’re already plentiful when so many streets in our community are bare? We are proud to do our part in creating an equity-conscious, tree-filled community in service of the present and future generations in every corner of Utah.

To get involved, check out our events page for volunteer opportunities. Our busiest planting seasons are in the Spring (March-May) and Fall (August-November).

Originally published in 1904 in his short story collection, Ghost Stories of an Antiquary, M.R. James' "The Ash-Tree" has remained a prolific, tree-centered horror tale throughout the past century. As leaves fall from trees and all that's left are the rough, curling, skeleton-like frames of the forest during the Fall season, trees are an essential ingredient for the  mise-en-scène of the spookiest season of the year. While trees lying in wait in their dormant phase during the colder seasons aren't really something to be afraid of, we hope this short story sates your craving for a tree-themed Halloween tale!

The Ash-Tree

By M.R. James

Everyone who has travelled over Eastern England knows the smaller country-houses with which it is studded—the rather dank little buildings, usually in the Italian style, surrounded with parks of some eighty to a hundred acres. For me they have always had a very strong attraction: with the grey paling of split oak, the noble trees, the meres with their reed-beds, and the line of distant woods. Then, I like the pillared portico—perhaps stuck on to a red-brick Queen Anne house which has been faced with stucco to bring it into line with the "Grecian" taste of the end of the eighteenth century; the hall inside, going up to the roof, which hall ought always to be provided with a gallery and a small organ. I like the library, too, where you may find anything from a Psalter of the thirteenth century to a Shakespeare quarto. I like the pictures, of course; and perhaps most of all I like fancying what life in such a house was when it was first built, and in the piping times of landlords' prosperity, and not least now, when, if money is not so plentiful, taste is more varied and life quite as interesting. I wish to have one of these houses, and enough money to keep it together and entertain my friends in it modestly.

But this is a digression. I have to tell you of a curious series of events which happened in such a house as I have tried to describe. It is Castringham Hall in Suffolk. I think a good deal has been done to the building since the period of my story, but the essential features I have sketched are still there—Italian portico, square block of white house, older inside than out, park with fringe of woods, and mere. The one feature that marked out the house from a score of others is gone. As you looked at it from the park, you saw on the right a great old ash-tree growing within half a dozen yards of the wall, and almost or quite touching the building with its branches. I suppose it had stood there ever since Castringham ceased to be a fortified place, and since the moat was filled in and the Elizabethan dwelling-house built. At any rate, it had wellnigh attained its full dimensions in the year 1690.

In that year the district in which the Hall is situated was the scene of a number of witch-trials. It will be long, I think, before we arrive at a just estimate of the amount of solid reason—if there was any—which lay at the root of the universal fear of witches in old times. Whether the persons accused of this offence really did imagine that they were possessed of unusual powers of any kind; or whether they had the will at least, if not the power, of doing mischief to their neighbours; or whether all the confessions, of which there are so many, were extorted by the mere cruelty of the witch-finders—these are questions which are not, I fancy, yet solved. And the present narrative gives me pause. I cannot altogether sweep it away as mere invention. The reader must judge for himself.

Castringham contributed a victim to the auto-da-fé. Mrs. Mothersole was her name, and she differed from the ordinary run of village witches only in being rather better off and in a more influential position. Efforts were made to save her by several reputable farmers of the parish. They did their best to testify to her character, and showed considerable anxiety as to the verdict of the jury.

But what seems to have been fatal to the woman was the evidence of the then proprietor of Castringham Hall—Sir Matthew Fell. He deposed to having watched her on three different occasions from his window, at the full of the moon, gathering sprigs "from the ash-tree near my house." She had climbed into the branches, clad only in her shift, and was cutting off small twigs with a peculiarly curved knife, and as she did so she seemed to be talking to herself. On each occasion Sir Matthew had done his best to capture the woman, but she had always taken alarm at some accidental noise he had made, and all he could see when he got down to the garden was a hare running across the park in the direction of the village.

On the third night he had been at the pains to follow at his best speed, and had gone straight to Mrs. Mothersole's house; but he had had to wait a quarter of an hour battering at her door, and then she had come out very cross, and apparently very sleepy, as if just out of bed; and he had no good explanation to offer of his visit.

Mainly on this evidence, though there was much more of a less striking and unusual kind from other parishioners, Mrs. Mothersole was found guilty and condemned to die. She was hanged a week after the trial, with five or six more unhappy creatures, at Bury St. Edmunds.

Sir Matthew Fell, then Deputy-Sheriff, was present at the execution. It was a damp, drizzly March morning when the cart made its way up the rough grass hill outside Northgate, where the gallows stood. The other victims were apathetic or broken down with misery; but Mrs. Mothersole was, as in life so in death, of a very different temper. Her "poysonous Rage," as a reporter of the time puts it, "did so work upon the Bystanders—yea, even upon the Hangman—that it was constantly affirmed of all that saw her that she presented the living Aspect of a mad Divell. Yet she offer'd no Resistance to the Officers of the Law; onely she looked upon those that laid Hands upon her with so direfull and venomous an Aspect that—as one of them afterwards assured me—the meer Thought of it preyed inwardly upon his Mind for six Months after."

However, all that she is reported to have said was the seemingly meaningless words: "There will be guests at the Hall." Which she repeated more than once in an undertone.

Sir Matthew Fell was not unimpressed by the bearing of the woman. He had some talk upon the matter with the Vicar of his parish, with whom he travelled home after the assize business was over. His evidence at the trial had not been very willingly given; he was not specially infected with the witch-finding mania, but he declared, then and afterwards, that he could not give any other account of the matter than that he had given, and that he could not possibly have been mistaken as to what he saw. The whole transaction had been repugnant to him, for he was a man who liked to be on pleasant terms with those about him; but he saw a duty to be done in this business, and he had done it. That seems to have been the gist of his sentiments, and the Vicar applauded it, as any reasonable man must have done.

A few weeks after, when the moon of May was at the full, Vicar and Squire met again in the park, and walked to the Hall together. Lady Fell was with her mother, who was dangerously ill, and Sir Matthew was alone at home; so the Vicar, Mr. Crome, was easily persuaded to take a late supper at the Hall.

Sir Matthew was not very good company this evening. The talk ran chiefly on family and parish matters, and, as luck would have it, Sir Matthew made a memorandum in writing of certain wishes or intentions of his regarding his estates, which afterwards proved exceedingly useful.

When Mr. Crome thought of starting for home, about half-past nine o'clock, Sir Matthew and he took a preliminary turn on the gravelled walk at the back of the house. The only incident that struck Mr. Crome was this: they were in sight of the ash-tree which I described as growing near the windows of the building, when Sir Matthew stopped and said:

"What is that that runs up and down the stem of the ash? It is never a squirrel? They will all be in their nests by now."

The Vicar looked and saw the moving creature, but he could make nothing of its colour in the moonlight. The sharp outline, however, seen for an instant, was imprinted on his brain, and he could have sworn, he said, though it sounded foolish, that, squirrel or not, it had more than four legs.

Still, not much was to be made of the momentary vision, and the two men parted. They may have met since then, but it was not for a score of years.

Next day Sir Matthew Fell was not downstairs at six in the morning, as was his custom, nor at seven, nor yet at eight. Hereupon the servants went and knocked at his chamber door. I need not prolong the description of their anxious listenings and renewed batterings on the panels. The door was opened at last from the outside, and they found their master dead and black. So much you have guessed. That there were any marks of violence did not at the moment appear; but the window was open.

One of the men went to fetch the parson, and then by his directions rode on to give notice to the coroner. Mr. Crome himself went as quick as he might to the Hall, and was shown to the room where the dead man lay. He has left some notes among his papers which show how genuine a respect and sorrow was felt for Sir Matthew, and there is also this passage, which I transcribe for the sake of the light it throws upon the course of events, and also upon the common beliefs of the time:

"There was not any the least Trace of an Entrance having been forc'd to the Chamber: but the Casement stood open, as my poor Friend would always have it in this Season. He had his Evening Drink of small Ale in a silver vessel of about a pint measure, and to-night had not drunk it out. This Drink was examined by the Physician from Bury, a Mr. Hodgkins, who could not, however, as he afterwards declar'd upon his Oath, before the Coroner's quest, discover that any matter of a venomous kind was present in it. For, as was natural, in the great Swelling and Blackness of the Corpse, there was talk made among the Neighbours of Poyson. The Body was very much Disorder'd as it laid in the Bed, being twisted after so extream a sort as gave too probable Conjecture that my worthy Friend and Patron had expir'd in great Pain and Agony. And what is as yet unexplain'd, and to myself the Argument of some Horrid and Artfull Designe in the Perpetrators of this Barbarous Murther, was this, that the Women which were entrusted with the laying-out of the Corpse and washing it, being both sad Persons and very well Respected in their Mournfull Profession, came to me in a great Pain and Distress both of Mind and Body, saying, what was indeed confirmed upon the first View, that they had no sooner touch'd the Breast of the Corpse with their naked Hands than they were sensible of a more than ordinary violent Smart and Acheing in their Palms, which, with their whole Forearms, in no long time swell'd so immoderately, the Pain still continuing, that, as afterwards proved, during many weeks they were forc'd to lay by the exercise of their Calling; and yet no mark seen on the Skin.

"Upon hearing-this, I sent for the Physician, who was still in the House, and we made as carefull a Proof as we were able by the Help of a small Magnifying Lens of Crystal of the condition of the Skinn on this Part of the Body: but could not detect with the Instrument we had any Matter of Importance beyond a couple of small Punctures or Pricks, which we then concluded were the Spotts by which the Poyson might be introduced, remembering that Ring of Pope Borgia, with other known Specimens of the Horrid Art of the Italian Poysoners of the last age.

"So much is to be said of the Symptoms seen on the Corpse. As to what I am to add, it is meerly my own Experiment, and to be left to Posterity to judge whether there be anything of Value therein. There was on the Table by the Beddside a Bible of the small size, in which my Friend—punctuall as in Matters of less Moment, so in this more weighty one—used nightly, and upon his First Rising, to read a sett Portion. And I taking it up—not without a Tear duly paid to him which from the Study of this poorer Adumbration was now pass'd to the contemplation of its great Originall—it came into my Thoughts, as at such moments of Helplessness we are prone to catch at any the least Glimmer that makes promise of Light, to make trial of that old and by many accounted Superstitious Practice of drawing the Sortes: of which a Principall Instance, in the case of his late Sacred Majesty the Blessed Martyr King Charles and my Lord Falkland, was now much talked of. I must needs admit that by my Trial not much Assistance was afforded me: yet, as the Cause and Origin of these Dreadful Events may hereafter be search'd out, I set down the Results, in the case it may be found that they pointed the true Quarter of the Mischief to a quicker Intelligence than my own.

"I made, then, three trials, opening the Book and placing my Finger upon certain Words: which gave in the first these words, from Luke xiii. 7, Cut it down; in the second, Isaiah xiii. 20, It shall never be inhabited; and upon the third Experiment, Job xxxix. 30, Her young ones also suck up blood."

This is all that need be quoted from Mr. Crome's papers. Sir Matthew Fell was duly coffined and laid into the earth, and his funeral sermon, preached by Mr. Crome on the following Sunday, has been printed under the title of "The Unsearchable Way; or, England's Danger and the Malicious Dealings of Anti-christ," it being the Vicar's view, as well as that most commonly held in the neighbourhood, that the Squire was the victim of a recrudescence of the Popish Plot.

His son, Sir Matthew the second, succeeded to the title and estates. And so ends the first act of the Castringham tragedy. It is to be mentioned, though the fact is not surprising, that the new Baronet did not occupy the room in which his father had died. Nor, indeed, was it slept in by anyone but an occasional visitor during the whole of his occupation. He died in 1735, and I do not find that anything particular marked his reign, save a curiously constant mortality among his cattle and live-stock in general, which showed a tendency to increase slightly as time went on.

Those who are interested in the details will find a statistical account in a letter to the Gentleman's Magazine of 1772, which draws the facts from the Baronet's own papers. He put an end to it at last by a very simple expedient, that of shutting up all his beasts in sheds at night, and keeping no sheep in his park. For he had noticed that nothing was ever attacked that spent the night indoors. After that the disorder confined itself to wild birds, and beasts of chase. But as we have no good account of the symptoms, and as all-night watching was quite unproductive of any clue, I do not dwell on what the Suffolk farmers called the "Castringham sickness."

The second Sir Matthew died in 1735, as I said, and was duly succeeded by his son, Sir Richard. It was in his time that the great family pew was built out on the north side of the parish church. So large were the Squire's ideas that several of the graves on that unhallowed side of the building had to be disturbed to satisfy his requirements. Among them was that of Mrs. Mothersole, the position of which was accurately known, thanks to a note on a plan of the church and yard, both made by Mr. Crome.

A certain amount of interest was excited in the village when it was known that the famous witch, who was still remembered by a few, was to be exhumed. And the feeling of surprise, and indeed disquiet, was very strong when it was found that, though her coffin was fairly sound and unbroken, there was no trace whatever inside it of body, bones, or dust. Indeed, it is a curious phenomenon, for at the time of her burying no such things were dreamt of as resurrection-men, and it is difficult to conceive any rational motive for stealing a body otherwise than for the uses of the dissecting-room.

The incident revived for a time all the stories of witch-trials and of the exploits of the witches, dormant for forty years, and Sir Richard's orders that the coffin should be burnt were thought by a good many to be rather foolhardy, though they were duly carried out.

Sir Richard was a pestilent innovator, it is certain. Before his time the Hall had been a fine block of the mellowest red brick; but Sir Richard had travelled in Italy and become infected with the Italian taste, and, having more money than his predecessors, he determined to leave an Italian palace where he had found an English house. So stucco and ashlar masked the brick; some indifferent Roman marbles were planted about in the entrance-hall and gardens; a reproduction of the Sibyl's temple at Tivoli was erected on the opposite bank of the mere; and Castringham took on an entirely new, and, I must say, a less engaging, aspect. But it was much admired, and served as a model to a good many of the neighbouring gentry in after-years.

One morning (it was in 1754) Sir Richard woke after a night of discomfort. It had been windy, and his chimney had smoked persistently, and yet it was so cold that he must keep up a fire. Also something had so rattled about the window that no man could get a moment's peace. Further, there was the prospect of several guests of position arriving in the course of the day, who would expect sport of some kind, and the inroads of the distemper (which continued among his game) had been lately so serious that he was afraid for his reputation as a game-preserver. But what really touched him most nearly was the other matter of his sleepless night. He could certainly not sleep in that room again.

That was the chief subject of his meditations at breakfast, and after it he began a systematic examination of the rooms to see which would suit his notions best. It was long before he found one. This had a window with an eastern aspect and that with a northern; this door the servants would be always passing, and he did not like the bedstead in that. No, he must have a room with a western look-out, so that the sun could not wake him early, and it must be out of the way of the business of the house. The housekeeper was at the end of her resources.

"Well, Sir Richard," she said, "you know that there is but one room like that in the house."

"Which may that be?" said Sir Richard.

"And that is Sir Matthew's—the West Chamber."

"Well, put me in there, for there I'll lie to-night," said her master. "Which way is it? Here, to be sure;" and he hurried off.

"Oh, Sir Richard, but no one has slept there these forty years. The air has hardly been changed since Sir Matthew died there."

Thus she spoke, and rustled after him.

"Come, open the door, Mrs. Chiddock. I'll see the chamber, at least."

So it was opened, and, indeed, the smell was very close and earthy. Sir Richard crossed to the window, and, impatiently, as was his wont, threw the shutters back, and flung open the casement. For this end of the house was one which the alterations had barely touched, grown up as it was with the great ash-tree, and being otherwise concealed from view.

"Air it, Mrs. Chiddock, all to-day, and move my bed-furniture in in the afternoon. Put the Bishop of Kilmore in my old room."

"Pray, Sir Richard," said a new voice, breaking in on this speech, "might I have the favour of a moment's interview?"

Sir Richard turned round and saw a man in black in the doorway, who bowed.

"I must ask your indulgence for this intrusion, Sir Richard. You will, perhaps, hardly remember me. My name is William Crome, and my grandfather was Vicar here in your grandfather's time."

"Well, sir," said Sir Richard, "the name of Crome is always a passport to Castringham. I am glad to renew a friendship of two generations' standing. In what can I serve you? for your hour of calling—and, if I do not mistake you, your bearing—shows you to be in some haste."

"That is no more than the truth, sir. I am riding from Norwich to Bury St. Edmunds with what haste I can make, and I have called in on my way to leave with you some papers which we have but just come upon in looking over what my grandfather left at his death. It is thought you may find some matters of family interest in them."

"You are mighty obliging, Mr. Crome, and, if you will be so good as to follow me to the parlour, and drink a glass of wine, we will take a first look at these same papers together. And you, Mrs. Chiddock, as I said, be about airing this chamber.... Yes, it is here my grandfather died.... Yes, the tree, perhaps, does make the place a little dampish.... No; I do not wish to listen to any more. Make no difficulties, I beg. You have your orders—go. Will you follow me, sir?"

They went to the study. The packet which young Mr. Crome had brought—he was then just become a Fellow of Clare Hall in Cambridge, I may say, and subsequently brought out a respectable edition of Polyænus—contained among other things the notes which the old Vicar had made upon the occasion of Sir Matthew Fell's death. And for the first time Sir Richard was confronted with the enigmatical Sortes Biblicæ which you have heard. They amused him a good deal.

"Well," he said, "my grandfather's Bible gave one prudent piece of advice—Cut it down. If that stands for the ash-tree, he may rest assured I shall not neglect it. Such a nest of catarrhs and agues was never seen."

The parlour contained the family books, which, pending the arrival of a collection which Sir Richard had made in Italy, and the building of a proper room to receive them, were not many in number.

Sir Richard looked up from the paper to the bookcase.

"I wonder," says he, "whether the old prophet is there yet? I fancy I see him."

Crossing the room, he took out a dumpy Bible, which, sure enough, bore on the flyleaf the inscription: "To Matthew Fell, from his Loving God-mother, Anne Aldous, 2 September, 1659."

"It would be no bad plan to test him again, Mr. Crome. I will wager we get a couple of names in the Chronicles. H'm! what have we here? 'Thou shalt seek me in the morning, and I shall not be.' Well, well! Your grandfather would have made a fine omen of that, hey? No more prophets for me! They are all in a tale. And now, Mr. Crome, I am infinitely obliged to you for your packet. You will, I fear, be impatient to get on. Pray allow me—another glass."

So with offers of hospitality, which were genuinely meant (for Sir Richard thought well of the young man's address and manner), they parted.

In the afternoon came the guests—the Bishop of Kilmore, Lady Mary Hervey, Sir William Kentfield, etc. Dinner at five, wine, cards, supper, and dispersal to bed.

Next morning Sir Richard is disinclined to take his gun with the rest. He talks with the Bishop of Kilmore. This prelate, unlike a good many of the Irish Bishops of his day, had visited his see, and, indeed, resided there for some considerable time. This morning, as the two were walking along the terrace and talking over the alterations and improvements in the house, the Bishop said, pointing to the window of the West Room:

"You could never get one of my Irish flock to occupy that room, Sir Richard."

"Why is that, my lord? It is, in fact, my own."

"Well, our Irish peasantry will always have it that it brings the worst of luck to sleep near an ash-tree, and you have a fine growth of ash not two yards from your chamber window. Perhaps," the Bishop went on, with a smile, "it has given you a touch of its quality already, for you do not seem, if I may say it, so much the fresher for your night's rest as your friends would like to see you."

"That, or something else, it is true, cost me my sleep from twelve to four, my lord. But the tree is to come down to-morrow, so I shall not hear much more from it."

"I applaud your determination. It can hardly be wholesome to have the air you breathe strained, as it were, through all that leafage."

"Your lordship is right there, I think. But I had not my window open last night. It was rather the noise that went on—no doubt from the twigs sweeping the glass—that kept me open-eyed."

"I think that can hardly be, Sir Richard. Here—you see it from this point. None of these nearest branches even can touch your casement unless there were a gale, and there was none of that last night. They miss the panes by a foot."

"No, sir, true. What, then, will it be, I wonder, that scratched and rustled so—ay, and covered the dust on my sill with lines and marks?"

At last they agreed that the rats must have come up through the ivy. That was the Bishop's idea, and Sir Richard jumped at it.

So the day passed quietly, and night came, and the party dispersed to their rooms, and wished Sir Richard a better night.

And now we are in his bedroom, with the light out and the Squire in bed. The room is over the kitchen, and the night outside still and warm, so the window stands open.

There is very little light about the bedstead, but there is a strange movement there; it seems as if Sir Richard were moving his head rapidly to and fro with only the slightest possible sound. And now you would guess, so deceptive is the half-darkness, that he had several heads, round and brownish, which move back and forward, even as low as his chest. It is a horrible illusion. Is it nothing more? There! something drops off the bed with a soft plump, like a kitten, and is out of the window in a flash; another—four—and after that there is quiet again.

"Thou shalt seek me in the morning, and I shall not be."

As with Sir Matthew, so with Sir Richard—dead and black in his bed!

A pale and silent party of guests and servants gathered under the window when the news was known. Italian poisoners, Popish emissaries, infected air—all these and more guesses were hazarded, and the Bishop of Kilmore looked at the tree, in the fork of whose lower boughs a white tom-cat was crouching, looking down the hollow which years had gnawed in the trunk. It was watching something inside the tree with great interest.

Suddenly it got up and craned over the hole. Then a bit of the edge on which it stood gave way, and it went slithering in. Everyone looked up at the noise of the fall.

It is known to most of us that a cat can cry; but few of us have heard, I hope, such a yell as came out of the trunk of the great ash. Two or three screams there were—the witnesses are not sure which—and then a slight and muffled noise of some commotion or struggling was all that came. But Lady Mary Hervey fainted outright, and the housekeeper stopped her ears and fled till she fell on the terrace.

The Bishop of Kilmore and Sir William Kentfield stayed. Yet even they were daunted, though it was only at the cry of a cat; and Sir William swallowed once or twice before he could say:

"There is something more than we know of in that tree, my lord. I am for an instant search."

And this was agreed upon. A ladder was brought, and one of the gardeners went up, and, looking down the hollow, could detect nothing but a few dim indications of something moving. They got a lantern, and let it down by a rope.

"We must get at the bottom of this. My life upon it, my lord, but the secret of these terrible deaths is there."

Up went the gardener again with the lantern, and let it down the hole cautiously. They saw the yellow light upon his face as he bent over, and saw his face struck with an incredulous terror and loathing before he cried out in a dreadful voice and fell back from the ladder—where, happily, he was caught by two of the men—letting the lantern fall inside the tree.

He was in a dead faint, and it was some time before any word could be got from him.

By then they had something else to look at. The lantern must have broken at the bottom, and the light in it caught upon dry leaves and rubbish that lay there, for in a few minutes a dense smoke began to come up, and then flame; and, to be short, the tree was in a blaze.

The bystanders made a ring at some yards' distance, and Sir William and the Bishop sent men to get what weapons and tools they could; for, clearly, whatever might be using the tree as its lair would be forced out by the fire.

So it was. First, at the fork, they saw a round body covered with fire—the size of a man's head—appear very suddenly, then seem to collapse and fall back. This, five or six times; then a similar ball leapt into the air and fell on the grass, where after a moment it lay still. The Bishop went as near as he dared to it, and saw—what but the remains of an enormous spider, veinous and seared! And, as the fire burned lower down, more terrible bodies like this began to break out from the trunk, and it was seen that these were covered with greyish hair.

All that day the ash burned, and until it fell to pieces the men stood about it, and from time to time killed the brutes as they darted out. At last there was a long interval when none appeared, and they cautiously closed in and examined the roots of the tree.

"They found," says the Bishop of Kilmore, "below it a rounded hollow place in the earth, wherein were two or three bodies of these creatures that had plainly been smothered by the smoke; and, what is to me more curious, at the side of this den, against the wall, was crouching the anatomy or skeleton of a human being, with the skin dried upon the bones, having some remains of black hair, which was pronounced by those that examined it to be undoubtedly the body of a woman, and clearly dead for a period of fifty years."

When Fall rolls around, many trees begin to change colors and eventually drop their leaves in a process called shedding, a topic we explored in last week’s blog post. This week, we’ll be learning about the trees that keep their leaves, both evergreens and the deciduous trees experiencing marcescence.

Marcescence is the phenomenon of plants retaining plant organs that are usually shed, sometimes referring to mushrooms that dry out and later revive, but most commonly used to refer to trees with leaves that change colors but do not drop until outside forces (like wind) remove them from their branches. Trees that experience marcescence are sometimes called “everciduous.” This group of trees includes species of oak and beech. In fact, all oaks display foliage marcescence for at least a portion of their lives, only becoming truly deciduous after reaching their full maturity. The evolutionary advantage of marcescence is not fully understood, but there are two main theories among many. The first being that retaining the leaves will help protect new leaf buds from winter desiccation. The second is that the leaves dropping later in the winter season or even in early spring provide the tree with a delayed source of moisture-preserving mulch, allowing the tree to take full advantage of the snowmelt.

Perhaps more famous than the “everciduous” trees are the evergreens, a group that includes pines, cedars, hemlocks, and spruces. These trees keep their green leaves (called needles) all year long. Instead of shutting down the production of chlorophyll in the winter months, many evergreens continue to produce and benefit from the chemical, one of the necessary ingredients for photosynthesis. With the energy they produce throughout the winter through photosynthesis, evergreens are able to maintain their needles, which allows them to return to full-capacity energy production immediately when spring rolls around. However, some evergreens do cease photosynthesis during the winter months. These evergreens are usually found at higher altitudes, where the soil isn’t as rich in nutrients. The needles of evergreens are able to store vast quantities of nutrients the trees need to survive. These nutrients are typically already scarce in soils at higher altitudes and even harder to access during the winter months due to the cold temperatures. During this time, evergreens are able to use the nutrients stored in their needled to compensate for the lack of nutrients available in the soil around them. The needle-shaped leaves of conifers also help the tree retain water throughout the season by producing a chemical called cutin, a wax-like substance that traps fluids in the needles and protects them from damage. The needles also produce proteins that act like antifreeze by binding to ice crystals, inhibiting their growth and preventing ice damage. These adaptations are also what allow conifers to succeed in drier climates, like Utah. The cutin they produce to retain water works in cold and hot months, lending itself to the trees’ survival all throughout the year.

There are evolutionary advantages in keeping leaves or in dropping them and the evolutionary pathways of tree species depend on the climate in which they find themselves. Deciduous trees found themselves in situations where it was more appropriate to shed their leaves and wait winters out in a dormant state while evergreens found a different way to pass their winters by. Both are marvelous examples of the natural world at work!

Each year, the landscape is painted with a vibrant array of reds and yellows as the trees lining the horizon change color and eventually drop from their branches. It’s an eye-catching spectacle, but also commonplace, allowing the routine marvel to cycle through each year without raising questions. Questions like “how do the leaves change color?” or “why do they do it?” If you’ve ever wondered why it happens, read on!

Rooted in place, trees clearly can’t migrate or seek shelter from the harsh winter conditions that will soon be upon us, so they’ve adapted to make do with their circumstances. As the days become shorter and temperatures drop, production of chlorophyll, the chemical responsible for the green color of leaves, stops and other chemicals dominate. Carotenes, the chemical responsible for yellow pigments, has been in the leaves the whole time, but chlorophyll’s brilliant green outshines the yellow for most of the year. Anthocyanins, chemicals responsible for reds and pinks, will enter production as long as temperatures stay above freezing. Drier, warmer Autumns will bring more red leaves (and a shorter period of time before leaves turn brown and drop). The balance of chemicals throughout the tree does not occur uniformly, which is why you might see greens, yellows, and reds all on one tree.

The color change is a side-effect of the shedding process, which involves the weakening of leaves’ abscission layer. The abscission layer is formed where the leaf grows out from the branch and is its primary point of connection. This point of connection is preserved throughout the Summer by the production of a hormone called auxin. Production of auxin slows as days get colder and shorter, causing the connections that hold leaves onto the branches to weaken and eventually break.

Bare branches in the Winter have three primary benefits. First, it allows the tree to expend far less energy in harsh conditions. The energy it would take to maintain leaves throughout a harsh Winter would be too much for a tree to handle. Second, it helps the tree preserve moisture in its trunk. During the Winter, almost all the water usually available to a tree is frozen, so the tree can no longer access it. By dropping its leaves, a tree can halt the process of evapotranspiration (how trees keep cool in the heat – think of it kind of like sweating) and the tree also saves water by not needing to send any to its leaves. Preserving moisture in a tree’s trunk is critical for its survival – it ensures the primary structure of the tree lives and it reduces risk of breakage. The third primary benefit is that the lack of leaves allows forceful Winter winds to pass through the branches with minimal strain. With leaves, the increased surface area would lead to increased wind resistance and more strain on the branches, which would increase the chances of detrimental breakage.

The vast majority of trees go through this process each year, keeping them safe and healthy throughout the Winter, but what about evergreens? Why don’t they go through this process? Well, tune in next week to find out!

In 1859, Lt. Edward Beale travelled through the forests of northern Arizona and described it in his journal as “…the most beautiful region… a vast forest of gigantic pines, intersected frequently with open glades, sprinkled all over with mountains, meadows, and wide savannahs…” In the past 100+ years, the region has changed drastically. The ponderosa pine forests once covered up to 25 million acres ranging from the south of British Columbia to northern Mexico, from the western Great Plains to the western coast, and were filled with old-growth trees that were up to 800 years old. Today, the ponderosa pine forests in the American west are mostly filled with younger trees, which are more vulnerable to wildfires than their old-growth ancestors. Throughout the late 1800s, the ponderosa pines were inordinately logged. They provided high yields of high-quality lumber, making them the first choice for builders in the frontier era, leaving other trees untouched until their regional supply of ponderosas was depleted. Like other pines, the ponderosa has struggled to return to its former state after a prolonged history with heavy logging and the more recent threat of invasive bark beetles. While the dolent loss of old-growth ponderosas is somewhat alleviated by the continued, fruitful natural propagation of young trees, we have only recently begun to understand the unique benefits of old-growth forests.

Old-growth forests in Utah are rare. Utah’s famous Pando, an aspen grove once thought to be the world’s largest living organism (now surpassed by a fungal mat in Oregon that spreads over 2,000 acres), is itself 80,000 years old, but no individual tree in Pando is older than 130 years, which excludes it from the old-growth forest category. Even the forests in Big Cottonwood Canyon and Little Cottonwood Canyon are comprised mostly of younger trees that took root after the mountains were nearly cleared by loggers. By the 1890s, Utah became a net importer of lumber, after having logged any and all suitable trees from the local area to supply the community’s growth. The forests that survived logging are in areas that were difficult to access during the state’s booming, industrial growth in the 1800s. Some of the most significant examples are forests of ponderosa pines located in the deserts of southern Utah, such as the stretch of old-growth trees in Dixie National Forest’s Red Canyon.

Fortunately, Utah’s forests are more protected than they have been historically, which hopefully means Utah’s future includes old-growth trees and the community who lives there at that time will reap the benefits of the work we put into ensuring at least some of our forests are well-protected today. Utah’s Division of Forestry, Fire, & State Lands implemented a new 10-year plan to revitalize the state’s forests in 2020, kicking off a new period of improved forest stewardship and protection. While the plan leaves a lot on the table, it’s one big step in securing a stable future for our state’s forests. Then, on a national level, the Biden administration recently sought out public input on old-growth forest conservation as part of Executive Order 14072: “Strengthening the Nation’s Forests, Communities, and Local Economies”, which will hopefully lead to even bigger steps towards greater protections for old-growth forests nationally and in Utah.

With efforts on the community, state, and national level, Utah’s future – albeit distant future – will include thousands of old-growth trees in state forests. Old-growth forests are key for sequestering carbon emissions – holding far more carbon than younger forests. They are also essential for maintaining a healthy water supply by storing and then gradually releasing clean water while also mitigating flood and fire impacts – all things that are desperately needed now and will be in even higher demand in the future. Our future generations need to the forests and so do future generations of wild animals and plants. Old-growth forests are required for the continued survival of thousands of species, without which Utah just wouldn’t feel like home. The remarkable wildlife that call Utah home need trees to survive and so do we.

The need to plant trees was immediately clear to the early settlers of Santa Clara in Washington County. Seeking to expand their community’s pool of shade, the settlers would transplant Fremont Cottonwood saplings from the banks of the Santa Clara River to the streets of their little town. With saplings readily available nearby that could easily be moved and then grew rapidly when in place, Santa Clara’s Main Street quickly became a shady haven. However, the settlers would later discover their tree of choice was not the best choice. The cottonwoods, removed from the nourishing riverside, struggled to survive and proved to be hazardous.

The hazardous nature of these struggling cottonwoods peaked in August of 1939, when the worst gale force winds in the town’s history shattered windows, lifted roofs, and tore trees from the ground. When the windstorm struck Santa Clara, Josephine Graf was out walking with her granddaughter, Loretta Frei, down Santa Clara Drive. Overpowered by the storm and unable to make it to shelter, Josephine shielded her granddaughter from the whirling debris, including a large cottonwood branch that had broken off a nearby tree, which struck Josephine’s neck, leading to her death.

Josephine Graf’s death united the small town of Santa Clara. Seeing what harm the brittle cottonwoods could do, they came together to remove and replace them with trees that would fare better and prove to be less hazardous in the community’s dry climate, eventually agreeing London Planetrees were the best option. The project began in the early 1940s and was completed through volunteer labor from the townspeople, who removed the cottonwoods and their stumps using axes, shovels, and their bare hands. Sylvan Graf, a relative of Josephine, volunteered to truck new trees in from San Diego. His job already required him to haul cattle from the locale to Nevada and California, so he would do that and return with a truckload of London Planetrees. With interruptions due to the onset of World War II and the strenuous nature of the work, the project took 8 years to complete. Once all the trees were planted, volunteers continued to nurture them for several years by hauling buckets of water to them until they were mature enough to survive off groundwater.

In the following decades, travelers passing through town on the old Highway 91 were amazed by the town’s greenery, often describing it as a desert oasis. The London Planetrees in Santa Clara remain as a stunning fixture and as a reminder of the town’s historic unity.

On the ground of the historic Utah County Courthouse, there’s a tree unlike any other in the world, an individual that stands out among an already-rare species.

The Ulmus Americana, also known as the American Elm or Water Elm, is a species of elm native to the Americas, naturally occurring in a region that encompasses almost the entirety of the eastern half of the United States. Although it’s a hardy tree that can withstand temperatures both high and low (as low as even -44’F), the species is currently listed as endangered. Due to logging and the spread of Dutch elm disease (DED), the majority of the population has been wiped out. Fortunately, progress has been made in developing practices to prevent the spread of DED to clustered and individual elms, including a vaccine. Researchers have also begun developing hybrid cultivars that are resistant to DED. While the Ulmus Americana population might not ever return to what it once was, their future is looking more stable. These innovations in tree protection will help our community protect one of Utah’s great treasures – the wholly unique Ulmus Americana on the grounds of the Utah County Courthouse in Provo. While the Ulmus Americana is already rare, this individual tree in Provo possesses qualities that are entirely unique to itself.

Shortly after the completion of the Utah County Courthouse in 1926, two county employees, Roni Christopherson and Elmer Pulley, were tasked with purchasing trees to be planted on the courthouse grounds. In their search for the right trees, Roni and Elmer went all the way up to a nursery in Ogden, where the owner gifted this special tree to the pair. Although the identity of the nursery owner is unknown, Roni and Elmer took note of his description of the tree’s origin – he had created the tree through experimentation, grafting budding willow trees to the body of an Ulmus Americana and in the end creating a lone, entirely unique tree that he called a Weeping American Elm. While technically an Ulmus Americana, this particular tree grows in a fashion that no other does. Its branches spread out into a twisting tabletop – sort of like a skinny octopus doing a headstand – and they’re so heavy they have to be supported by metal beams to protect them from their own weight. Throughout its 96-year history, the county has done all it can to keep this unique, beautiful tree healthy and kempt for generations well into the future to enjoy.

In 1954, Rudy Drobnick, a graduate student studying under the famous Utah botanist, Dr. Walter Cottam, was hiking on the west side of the Oquirrh Mountains when he noticed the grove of oaks he was passing through had distinct features, different from others in the area and any he had seen before. Moving forward in his studies with the possibility that he had found a new oak in mind, he shifted the focus of his thesis to this potentially groundbreaking discovery. Through his field research, Drobnick discovered a few additional isolated groups of this distinct oak, including one on the University of Utah grounds nearby what would later become Cottam’s Oak Grove, where Dr. Walter Cottam stationed a tree nursery where he recreated the conditions that would reproduce and confirm Drobnick’s discovery of rare, hybridized oaks.

These hybrids are a product of a historic natural process that took place 5,000 to 7,000 years ago – a time when Utah and the Great Basin region was wetter and hotter. During this time, the habitat zones of the northern quercus gambelii (Gambel or scrub oak) and southern quercus turbinella (sonoran scrub oak or canyon live oak) briefly overlapped. The two species met in the brief intersection of their habitable zones and hybridized, creating the unique gambelii x turbinella hybrid. Cottam recreated this process by pollinating q. gambelli starts with the pollen from q. turbinella on a site similar to locations where the hybrid is found in the wild. This grove of human-produced hybrids is now known as the Cottam Oak Grove and is located in what is now Red Butte Garden & Arboretum. Through this experiment, Cottam was able to effectively prove that hybridization between the two species is possible when conditions are right, confirming their suspected history. This discovery drew biologists from all over the world – they had to see the hybrid oaks.

Now, the hybrid oaks in the wild stand as “living fossils,” providing us with evidence of Utah’s climate past and Cottam’s Oak Grove stands as a relic of Utah’s contributions to the world of science and our community’s ardent engagement with the natural world around us.

Cedar Breaks National Monument - located just south of Parowan in Iron County - is a natural amphitheater that stretches across 3 miles and has a depth of over 2,000 feet. The rock formations found here are similar to those in Bryce Canyon National Park but are more eroded. The meadowed rim of the amphitheater blooms each spring with Colorado columbine, scarlet paintbrush, orange sneezeweed, prairie smoke, yellow evening primrose, plantainleaf buttercup, and two species of penstemon among many other wildflowers. Visitors will frequently spot mule deer and porcupines, but will even more frequently see marmots, golden-mantled ground squirrels, pocket gophers, violet-green swallows, and ravens. The monument is home to several tree species, like bristlecone pine, subalpine firs, aspen, and limber pine among others, but one tree species is unexpectedly absent – cedars.

Originally called un-cap-i-un-ump or “circle of painted cliffs” by the native Paiutes, the monument lies within the traditional homeland of the Southern Paiutes, an area that spans across southern Utah, Nevada, and northern Arizona. Within the monument itself, archeologists have documented sites of ancestral natives dating back more than 10,000 years. It wasn’t until 1919, when the first automobile reached Cedar Breaks, that settlers of European heritage found substantial interest in the area. Shortly after the first machine-made venture into the area, a road was constructed that connected Cedar Breaks to the east side of Zion National Park, making it more accessible and therefore more popular. In the 1930s, visitation increased dramatically after advertisements were made showcasing the soon-to-be national monument – one of which read, “…countless grotesque and magnificent geological forms, caused by water erosion, anointed with all colors of the spectrum…”

Then, on August 22, 1933, President Franklin D. Roosevelt officialized the area’s status as a US National Monument, christened with its longstanding misnomer, Cedar Breaks National Monument. While the monument certainly is a break, the word early pioneers used to describe what we now refer to as badlands, there were no cedars in Utah until they were introduced by new settlers. What the early pioneers mistook for cedars were actually Utah junipers, or juniperus osteosperma, of the cypress family. Utah junipers are found throughout most of Utah and are very drought, cold, and heat resistant. They’re hardy and they can tolerate a variety of soil conditions, even doing well in dry, rocky locations. They can be recognized by their small scale-shaped leaves and their gray bark. Although the Utah juniper does well in most growing conditions throughout the state, they haven’t become very popular for home landscaping. However, their hardiness makes them the perfect candidate for xeriscaping and water-wise gardening on properties with plenty of sun.

While its name might technically be a bit dishonest, don’t let that deter you from visiting Cedar Breaks National Monument. In the summer heat, its high elevation and its trees (although not cedar) provide a cool getaway. Besides, as Shakespeare put it, “what’s in a name?”

To learn more about trees in Utah, click here.

Close-up of a Utah juniper's branches

In 1764, 25 years before he would become the first President of the United States, George Washington and five partners formed a company called Adventurers for Draining the Dismal Swamp. A surveyor by trade, Washington had thoroughly explored the perimeter of a million-acre wetland forest on what is now land bordering the states of Virginia and North Carolina. He called this area the Great Dismal Swamp and described it as a “glorious paradise” full of creatures to be hunted. A paradise rich with natural resources. Still, the Adventurers for Draining the Dismal Swamp, empowered by the General Assembly of Virginia, who granted them financing and permission to cut canals through even private lands, undertook a massive venture to clear cut vast stretches, selling the lumber and the promise of soon-to-be dry, arable land.

George Washington and his company were, of course, not the only ones harvesting the lumber from American wetlands. In the last 300 years, the majority of wetlands in the contiguous United States have been lost to logging or converted to land for agriculture or urban development. When European colonizers first arrived in the 1600s, the land was covered in approximately 221 million acres of wetlands - by the 1980s, only 103 million acres remained. Twenty-two states have lost 50% or more of their wetland forests and six states have lost more than 85%.

Through the 1700s especially, wetlands and swamps in particular were considered blights on what could be prosperous land. They “bred disease”, restricted travel, and took up rich soil where crops could be instead - far from favorable for frontier folk. The choice to clear the wetlands seemed natural, because these new settlers were oblivious to the resources that prospered in them and the protection they provided.

In the mid-1800s, the US government passed the Swamp Land Acts of 1849, 1850, and 1860 – each turning federal land containing swamps over to states that promised to drain them. During this time, the US was going through a period of rapid expansion. The population was growing quickly, both through domestic childbirth and immigration. While the country was also expanding westward, the need for farmable land nearby was high. So, again, the choice to clear more wetlands seemed natural.

Over the centuries, the American wetlands - refashioned to suit its new settlers - have changed drastically. While clearing the wetlands made sense at the time, we’ve come to learn that wetlands are invaluable resources and the long-term effects of this habitat loss has become clear.

Wetlands are an essential part of regional ecosystems – in which we’re included. We need wetlands to sustain our water supply, both because they work to filter pollutants and because they’re a source of water. They also work to protect our communities from severe weather, like hurricanes and flooding, by dampening the force with which they hit the land and by preventing land corrosion. Additionally, wetlands sequester approximately 20-30% of global carbon emissions - peatlands on their own store twice as much carbon as the world’s forests despite covering only 3% of the planet’s surface. These areas are also home to unique wildlife and fascinating plants; one-third of the currently-listed endangered species rely on wetlands to survive.

As the second driest state in the country, it’s no surprise that wetlands account for only 1% of Utah’s total land coverage. Because they’re so rare within our state, that makes them even more valuable. In an arid landscape, we need all the water we can get and our wetlands provide a hefty portion of our water supply. They’re also essential tools in preventing flooding, the costliest and most prevalent hazard in Utah. Although Utah’s wetlands are still in danger, we thankfully have many individuals in our community working to preserve and restore these valuable features of our state. Nonprofit communities (like the Sageland Collaborative and TreeUtah) along with governmental organizations (like the Utah Geological Survey) and numerous individuals throughout the state are working hard to maintain our wetlands.

To get involved with TreeUtah’s habitat restoration projects, check our events page or sign up for our newsletter to stay up to date on our latest projects.

The World Needs Forests

Forests are important. They are home to 80% of the globe’s wildlife population, they reduce soil erosion, lessen the impact of floods, and they remove incredible amounts of carbon-dioxide from our atmosphere, ensuring we have breathable air. The tropical forests alone store around 250 billion tons of carbon. Without forests cleaning our air, life on Earth couldn’t continue – at least not for us – but we continue to lose our forests at a concerning rate. Between 1990 and 2015, we lost 129 million hectares of forest (nearly 500,000 square miles). While deforestation has slowed, we are far from reaching a balanced, sustainable relationship with our forests. Our forests – and us in turn – will only survive if we deploy all available means to reduce deforestation and support new growth.

Afforestation – planting forests upon land previously unforested – can be a massive undertaking, but it’s one of the few things communities can do to soften the blow of global deforestation. Thanks to the late Akira Miyawaki, Japanese botanist and specialist in natural vegetation restoration, a method for afforestation has been developed that allows for small-scale, rapid forestation. This method is now commonly known as the Miyawaki Method.

The Miyawaki Method

The Miyawaki Method was developed to support the rapid growth of diverse native plant species in relatively small spaces with minimal maintenance. The method only requires a minimum space of 1000 square feet, grows ten times faster than naturally-growing forests, and the planted forest can survive nearly maintenance-free after only three years of growth. The rapid growth of Miyawaki forests is attributed to the densely-packed planting and the use of native plant species. Native species are, of course, going to be the best candidates to thrive in the selected planting location, because they’ve evolved over the course of centuries to do just that. A biodiverse selection of plants also lends itself to the long-term stability of the forest – diversity creates a layered canopy and ecological resilience. Then, being packed closely together, they’re forced into a highly competitive race to soak up the sunlight, resulting in rapid growth. After 20-30 years, the surviving plants and trees will reach heights that would have taken 150-200 years to reach in a natural process.

The resulting tiny forest is also densely-packed with benefits. In addition to supporting local biodiversity and the benefits that always come with new trees, Miyawaki forests are also 30 times better at dust and noise reduction and absorb up to 30 times more carbon-dioxide than monoculture planting projects.

Because the Miyawaki method can be applied in areas with limited land and resources while still resulting in a flourishing forest, it’s perfect for urban settings. A small parcel of land, whether it’s an empty lot or a small portion of a public park, can easily be turned into an urban forest. Urban forests are essential in mitigating the effects of climate change – both locally and globally. Our efforts on the local-scale to rehabilitate and create new forests is an important contribution to the global concerted effort to ensure a livable planet for future generations. With critical deadlines for meaningful climate action approaching quickly, we need to act quickly. Thanks to Akira Miyawaki, we have one more tool at our disposal to make swift, meaningful change.

TreeUtah and Alta Ski Resort have partnered up to save saplings that have popped up in their ski runs during the off season. After digging up the saplings, volunteers helped us transport the saplings to a nursery, where the saplings will wait until the Fall planting season when they'll be transplanted to other areas of the mountain. By rescuing saplings from the ski runs, we're able to assist the surrounding forest with its natural reproduction process rather than bring in new trees from the outside. All the forest needs is a little direction and help from our wonderful volunteers!

Check out some photos from our first Alta tree rescue below:

All photos by Diane Hartz Warsoff

A perfectly green lawn, a long-time indicator of a functioning household and a long-time indicator of wasted resources. The Western fascination with grass lawns goes way back, originating in the gardens of the 18th century English and French upper-class. Drawing inspiration from launds – grassy clearings among trees - in the surrounding European forests, the wealthy sought to recreate the experience in their expansive gardens, leading to what we now recognize as lawns. Lawns eventually made their way to the Americas in the 19th century through our own historical elites – like Thomas Jefferson, an avid horticulturalist. Although home gardens in the US remained dedicated to consumable vegetation for several decades, by the mid-19th century, focus shifted to the ornamental. After the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia in 1876, where the USDA presented a how-to exhibit on growing your own grass lawn, interest steadily grew throughout the next 100 years. After several innovations made in lawncare in the early 1900s, grass lawns became a standard in the booming American suburbs. Now, another 100 years later, lawns are still as commonplace as ever, but do we have the means to keep this tradition alive?

In short, yes, we do. Despite the megadrought and surging heatwaves, our lawns can survive, because they’re well-propagated for hardship. Of all the plants in our garden, grass is sure to be the one that needs the least amount of water to survive. Although it might brown, it’s still alive and the green will return next year. This browning is part of grass’s seasonal cycle. Like other perennials, grass enters a period of dormancy once it undergoes the stresses of their disfavored seasons. This stage in its annual cycle can be delayed with extensive watering, but our limited resources would be best spent on plants in the garden that need it more.

Trees need our help most. Arguably the most valuable plants in our gardens because of the benefits they provide for our homes and communities, trees should be our top watering priority. While grasses only need half an inch (~1 quart) of water every 2-4 weeks  to survive the season,  trees require 5-50 gallons of water a week (or more, if the tree is especially large). As sturdy as they appear to be, trees are far more delicate than grass and they need our help to survive the ongoing megadrought, which is predicted to end in 2030 at the earliest. Paired with the fact that extended drought events are expected to become more severe and more common, our focus-shift away from grass and towards trees will likely and necessarily be permanent.

Salt Lake City’s canopy has been steadily receding since the early 2000s, largely due to trees being neglected within recurring periods of drought. Without adequate water, trees either die off or they become too brittle to withstand high winds and dense snow fall, leading to broken branches or treefall. In addition to causing damage to anything beneath them when this happens, we lose the irreplaceable benefits old-growth trees provide. Benefits like cleaner air and shade – things we’ll be immeasurably thankful for in the harsh Summers ahead, things grass can’t provide. Grass doesn’t do much for us and it doesn’t need our help, so let’s concentrate on the plants that do, trees.

Heat is a silent predator – lurking in the periphery until the timing is right and then it pounces on your delicate herb garden, leaving it wilting under the scorching sun with little hope. For the last few years, Salt Lake City summers have been characterized by excessive heat. Each year, the summer season breaks records. This heat is a continuing extreme weather event linked to climate change and it has touched everything.

Everything from ourselves, wildlife, plants, and abiotic factors are experiencing the effects of this excess heat. In Utah’s semi-arid climate, we have very little moisture to spare, so every drop is critical. If heat levels increase in the air, the moisture in the soil can be affected too and dry out, which leads to less ground water for our wild landscapes, our gardens, the wildlife, and us. What can we do to prepare and protect both ourselves and our habitat from a predator as seasoned and pervasive as the boiling summer heat?

Planting for Drought

For a lush garden in the midst of drought and surging heat, choose plants that flourish in dryer climates.  We have done some of the research for you and we have a list of trees that do well in regions prone to drought. Making the choice to plant more drought-tolerant species could get you a three-for-one kind of deal. One, once a drought-tolerant shade tree reaches maturity, the surrounding area will be shaded, which leads to less money spent on AC in the Summer. Two, adding various types of drought-tolerant species can help diversify and allow resiliency to the ecosystem in the area. Three, adding native trees to the urban forest can limit the threat of invasive species from taking over.

Conserving Water

A drought-resistant garden, of course, will help reduce water use. While watering the garden, it’s also important to ensure water is being used to maximum effect by watering early in the morning or at night to prevent significant evaporative water loss and by refraining from watering when it’s too windy. Gardeners should also be mindful of prioritizing the plants that need water most: trees, shrubs, perennials, annuals, and then grass. Additionally, taking shorter showers, turning off the faucet while brushing teeth, running swamp coolers on the lowest setting, and other household water-saving efforts can go a long way in reducing the community’s overall water use. By conserving water, we can secure a reliable water supply for future generations and support the wildlife that makes Utah a beautiful, unique place to live, ensuring our community will be able to safely enjoy our remarkable habitat along the Wasatch wildland-urban interface for decades to come.

Personal Preparation for Extreme Heat

With increasing occurrence of wildfires in the region and indefinitely hotter, drier Summers, it’s a good idea to take measures now to do what you can to beat the heat and to have an action plan in place if you are in an area that is at wildfire risk. Keeping your house cool using tools beyond AC will help you find relief from the heat without overburdening the electrical grid or your wallet. These tools include adequate drapery or shades, weather-stripped doors and windows, and adequate insulation. It’s also important to ensure you are staying hydrated and have supplies ready to go in case of emergency, whether it’s due to wildfire or heat-caused power outages. The American Red Cross and the U.S. emergency preparedness website both have excellent advice and resources that can help us plan for the hot Summers ahead.

At this point, we know Summers will keep getting hotter and it’s important for us all to take the steps we can to prepare. As individuals and as a community, we can adapt and beat the heat.

Last Saturday, over 35 great volunteers helped us plant 10 new trees in Inglewood Park. In 2020, many old trees across all of Northern Utah were lost to the hurricane-strength windstorm. Inglewood Park lost a number of large trees and branches. At the planting, TreeUtah volunteers planted a row of hedge maples, redbud, and a tulip tree to restore the canopy cover in the area.

TreeUtah spent last Saturday on the University of Utah campus. We planted a mix of asian trees including Japanese Zelkova and Gingko alongside students from the Asian American Student Association and horticulturists from the U. These trees will add to the beauty of the University of Utah's campus arboretum for generations to come! 

There is a Chinese proverb that says, “the best time to plant a tree is twenty years ago. The second best time is now”. 

Trees are complex beautiful things that provide us benefits we may take for granted without realizing it. They are mighty carbon warriors who take in excess carbon out of the atmosphere and in turn oxygenate our earth. Trees are also great creators of shade, our protectors against the sun’s rays when it gets too much. Shade from tree canopy, however, is not distributed equitably here in Salt Lake City and the effects are substantially felt on the west side. At TreeUtah we are working to plant more trees each year through our West Side Initiative. All people have a right to nature and we are initiating change by planting trees.

The inaccessibility of tree canopy coverage in an urban environment inevitably leads to consequences from the heat island effect. The heat island effect is not new, but as we increasingly urbanize now and in years down the line, areas will experience higher overall temperatures (up to 25 degrees Fahrenheit more during the hottest afternoons) if greenspace is not prioritized and dark surfaces like asphalt and buildings become more dominant.

Adding trees into spaces, however, will mitigate a common concern in urban areas which is ground-level ozone. Ground-level ozone is a harmful pollutant made from the interaction of the sun, volatile organic compounds found in common household products, and nitrogen oxide from car exhaust. Experiencing hotter days because of climate change and the urban heat island certainly does not help our ground-level ozone levels. With one of the benefits of trees being that they lower air pollution, trees are one solution to improve ground-level ozone and help individuals who are medically sensitive or who may be prone to suffer from illnesses correlated to bad air quality. 

Adding things like trees in areas will also foster a sense of place and belonging for individuals because of bringing people together in outdoor spaces that seem more inviting. For further info on the social, environmental, and economic benefits provided to us each day by trees, check out our about page.

Not that long ago, the pandemic started to change the way we work. With workplace culture increasingly switching to remote, people are gravitating toward spending more time outside and participating in outdoor activities. However, we cannot reap the ultimate benefits from these experiences if basic things such as tree cover and green space are lacking. These benefits that trees provide us like improving air quality, helping the heat island, along with the change in our time spent in nature, all build up to why trees are so important in planting equitably on the streets and in places like Title I schools. Our West Side Initiative coincides with Mayor Mendenhall’s four year plan of planting an additional 1,000 trees just on the west side of Salt Lake City each year. Keep your eye out for our next community tree planting on the west side by keeping up to date on our events. 

Sometimes, it is the aesthetics of the natural world that draw us outside. Have you come across a unique tree in your experience while walking in your neighborhood? Or perhaps you came across a tree that you admired while traveling. All trees are unique in their own way, but there are some really unique ones around the world. Let’s travel around the world to five unique types of trees. 

The Tree of Forty Fruits in New York

A few years ago, Syracuse University art professor Sam Van Aken  decided to create a living piece of art. Using the technique known as chip grafting, Van Aken began the process of creating a tree bearing forty different kinds of stone fruit including plums, peaches, apricots, and nectarines. Van Aken is using the tree as a conservation message to spread awareness that decisions around agriculture have led to less diverse representation of the kinds of fruits in our markets. 

In the spring, the Tree of Forty Fruit then begins to bloom, showing its variety of colors, all sections indicating what stone fruit it bears. His first Tree of Forty Fruits remains in New York, but he has created other similar trees in other eastern states not exclusively to Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Maine.

Methuselah: A Bristlecone Pine in California

What makes this tree so special is it is quite an old tree - approximately almost 5,000 years old to be exact. Currently, it is one of the oldest bristlecone pines on earth and its name Methuselah has roots in the biblical Methuselah who supposedly lived nearly a millennium. 

You can tell Methuselah is a bristlecone pine by its appearance. A bristlecone pine’s unique thick and twisted trunk makes them look like a sturdy tree. This tree species is because it can withstand surviving off less water than other trees. Bristlecone pines can endure arid-like climates which is why you will see them in states like Utah, Nevada, or California.  

Dragon Blood Tree on the Island of Socotra in Yemen

Dragon blood trees, also known as dracaena cinnabari, are not like any trees seen here in Utah because they are endemic to the island of Socotra in Yemen. Their unusual appearance is often from the branches collectively forming what looks like an upturned umbrella. Only able to thrive in the conditions on the island, taking measures to conserve them right now is so important. As with many trees, environmental factors such as climate change are affecting these trees and these trees hold cultural importance to the people on the island. The tree’s resin can be used for natural healing practices. Dragon blood trees get their name from this ‘blood’ resin that is a byproduct from the tree’s bark.  

DeadVlei Trees in Namibia

Around 900 years ago, the earth experienced what is called the Medieval Warm Period. An anomaly in the patterns for climatic changes, certain parts of the earth are proposed to have experienced an unusually warmer climate.

What is now known as Namibia in Southern Africa was a location that could have been impacted by this anomaly. The new climate from the Medieval Warm Period changed the landscape and these trees could not acclimate nor could these conditions allow for the trees to properly break down into detritus. The trees now serve as relics to the past and a tool to increase our understanding of the past climate.

Ginkgo Tree in China

The ginkgo tree originates in China, but is well suited to a variety of conditions and has fared well in urban environments. 

When a female ginkgo tree sheds its seeds, it can emit an unpleasant odor in the near vicinity, but the tree’s color in the fall is a beautiful bright yellow that will make up for the smell. 

Historically, ginkgo trees like the DeadVlei trees in Namibia are evidence rich in our long climatic history. Gingko trees have been recorded to be dated back more than 200 million years before the dinosaurs became extinct. Dinosaurs became extinct roughly 66 million years ago. These ginkgo trees have lived through quite a lot.

A common question that surely goes around tree enthusiasts is how can you identify a dogwood? The answer is of course by its bark. The red-osier dogwood is one of the shrubby plants volunteers, with the help of TreeUtah and Wasatch Mountain State Park staff, identified on the hike just a few weeks ago. The American native red-osier dogwood by all appearances bears white berries and has multiple stems that are a bright and flashy red in its early years. The red stems become less bright as it ages, though. Nevertheless, it is hard to miss this aesthetically pleasing shrub when eyeing a landscape. 

Every kind of tree or shrubby plant is unique in their own way, both in their appearance and their benefits to wildlife or people. Besides being deciduous, the red-osier dogwood is a great option for when needing to help areas prone to erosion like wetlands and even your own backyard that contains wetter soil. The red-osier dogwood has strong fibrous roots holding it in place which helps the surrounding soil not blow or wash away into surrounding waters or in the air.

The red-osier dogwood also has various versatile uses. Inside the bark of the tree contains fibrous wood components that can be used as a tobacco substitute by indigenous populations. Additionally, it’s bright and slender branches are used to weave baskets which are similar to what wicker baskets look like. Though these uses serve their purpose, we need to look at the red-osier dogwood not for its benefits it brings humans, but through the larger context of the wildlife and environment as a whole. 

Various wildlife like moose, elk, and birds use its stems and spring blooming flowers as a resource for shelter or sustenance. Birds in the United States like American robins, pheasants, and ruffed grouse are some that have benefited from the red-osier. Though, the ruffed grouse is a nonmigratory bird that can be found in the more northern region of Utah and is one of ninety-five birds who use this shrubby plant as a food source. Based on a vulnerability map by the Audubon Society, ruffed grouse could become especially vulnerable during the winter months from temperature increases due to climate change. With the red-osier dogwood not drought tolerant and climate change possibly impacting soil moisture, what kind of changes would this bring to the ruffed grouse using the red-osier dogwood as a resource? 

The red-osier dogwood is quite unique and an important resource for some wildlife so the question being asked is important in addressing. We have a list of what trees similar to the red-osier dogwood that you can plant, so give it a look here.

For the past few years, TreeUtah and the Utah Department of Agriculture  and Food (UDAF) Insect Program have worked to protect native and naturalized ash trees from the threat of invasives. We spoke recently with Joey Caputo who is a Survey Entomologist at UDAF and he told us the UDAF Insect Program is dedicated to “protecting the social, environmental, and economic integrity of the great state of Utah” from invasive insects and disease. 

An invasive species that has especially made headlines from a federal issued quarantine as early as 2020 is the emerald ash borer (EAB), also known as Agrilus planipennis. The EAB is a green beetle originating from northeast Asia that feeds on ash trees, decimating their tree populations within a few years of the insects becoming in contact with them. There is a high concentration of ash called Fraxinus anomala making it vital to protect them. The beetle was first discovered in Michigan in 2002 through infested nursery stock or firewood, which are the two ways EAB can travel from place to place.

Ash trees are an important piece to Utah’s landscape. The EAB poses a threat because as a whole, ash trees make up 15-20% of urban tree cover in Utah. If the EAB is introduced into Utah, the imminent decimation of ash trees could consequently reduce the aesthetics and other benefits trees provide. Implications of reduced tree cover can be anything from excess heat from the heat island effect, pollution not being removed from the atmosphere, and diminished habitat for important wildlife. Caputo says some ash trees can be saved from the EAB, but not without environmental costs because of ample pesticide use. When using pesticides, effects are not just localized to the areas they are used. The ingestion of toxic pesticide chemicals by birds, mammals, or insects can cause a tip in the precarious balance of an ecosystem. 

While we are an organization who strives to protect the native ash population with UDAF, the steps you can take as an individual are important for prevention of further devastation too. The federal issued quarantine by the USDA ended in 2020, but the UDAF issued guidelines to mitigate the issue via their own R68-11. Quarantine Pertaining to the Emerald Ash Borer and R68-23 Utah Firewood Quarantine.

What is important to note is the native ash trees in the United States are more at risk than ash trees from where the beetle originated. Trees in northeast Asia have had a chance through generations to coexist and adapt and become unaffected by the beetle while ash trees here have not. With this in mind, we asked Caputo what next steps Utahns can take to help mitigate the issue and he broke it down into four simple steps. 

1) Source and support locally chopped wood. Caputo says, “firewood should never be transported across state-lines and firewood harvested within the state shouldn’t be moved more than 50 miles from its origin”.

2) Maintain your yard to be biodiverse because that small ecosystem you have created could be more resilient and less prone to buckling in the future. At TreeUtah we have an extensive list of tree recommendations in place of ash, so make sure to visit our tree guide on our website the next time you plant a tree. 

3) Keep your eyes open for EAB infestation signs. Caputo says to contact UDAF if “small d-shaped exit holes in the bark, a thinning canopy, and leafy shoots growing out of the lower trunk” are visible on an ash tree.

4) Be eager for knowledge and an active participant in your community for spreading word about the EAB. Information you spread is valuable to keeping the EAB from decimating our native ash trees.

Thank you to Joey Caputo for invaluable insight into the emerald ash borer. 

For a while, Valentine’s Day in the United States has had symbols such as the heart shaped box of chocolates, a bouquet of roses, and romantic dinners to show your love for those you care about. Not everyone may have access to displaying their love for loved ones through these cultural symbols on Valentine’s Day however. Rather, this special day can be used to explore other forms of showing love built more on experience rather than the many disposable symbols of our Valentine's Day culture. 

Donate

A non-consumptive gift idea that a loved one will appreciate this Valentine’s Day is donation through TreeUtah. Your donation to us allows you the option to select a tree for them, which is a great way to show your love through a physical symbol to that special person.  We can send a personalized message through card or email to let them know about the tribute at your request too. Donating through our memorial tree program at Sugar House Park is another option.

With our mission to make Utah a better place to live, we will use these donations for the trees we will plant at our planting events in the spring.  Know that each and every donation we receive will in turn help us plant more trees that will grow, bloom, and strengthen year after year just as your bond with a loved one will grow stronger year after year. We have many exciting volunteer opportunities like our upcoming tree planting events. You can register as a volunteer this spring. Follow for our updates about these events through our events page, our Facebook, or through Now Playing Utah.

Get Outside

Next, an inexpensive thing to do on Valentine’s Day is an outdoor activity. We do live in the  beautiful state of Utah, so take advantage of it. An outdoor activity can be in the form of going on a hike or even gathering up a picnic dinner and eating it under the night sky. Order takeout by supporting local or make a simple meal from home and bring it with you. Leave your worries behind, bundle up, and enjoy the great outdoors and being in the moment with loved ones through this simple idea.

The Impact of Buying Flowers

The options are truly endless on how to spend your Valentine’s Day not in the form of heart shaped boxes of chocolate, roses, or expensive romantic dinners. While we are not saying that these are still not great ways to show you care for your loved ones, the floriculture industry for those bouquets of flowers bought in the United States and globally for days like Valentine’s Day isn’t without its problems.

In 2015, floriculture constituted 17% of imports into the United States and as of 2018, Columbia is one of the largest exporters of flowers like roses. The process of getting non domestic flowers from place to place is a relatively short process hopping from one country to the next because of the priority to maintain the utmost freshness of the flowers. Though the typical time frame flowers take to transport can vary based on the location they ship from.

In the beginning of their long journey from field or greenhouse to store to the ultimate goal of vases in our homes, flowers are refrigerated at around 50 degrees Fahrenheit while on a plane. The energy costs of constant refrigeration along with the greenhouse gas emissions of an airplane, freight trucks, and cars to get flowers to their final destinations begins to add up at a heavy cost. Carbon dioxide emissions from a plane ride alone constitutes a ratio of three kilograms of carbon dioxide per 1 kilogram of fuel. 

While this very briefly covers some of the far-reaching environmental impacts associated with non-domestic rose production, supporting locally grown roses, opting for outdoor activities, or donating this Valentine’s Day are the more sustainable choices. What will you choose to do for Valentine’s Day?

Last Saturday, over 35 eager volunteers and TreeUtah and Wasatch Mountain State Park staff braved the chilly weather and gathered for our snowshoe hike. While our snowshoe hike ended up turning into an ice cleat hike, volunteers in several groups spent their morning exploring part of the beautiful and snowy 23,000 acres within Wasatch Mountain State Park.

In those groups, volunteers came upon ten different tagged trees on their hike. They used a dichotomous key to identify specific characteristics leading them to identify the species. Volunteers learned about tree facts specific to the identified trees such as the gambel oak, chokecherry, and the quaking aspen along with general tree facts from the staff member leading each group. We absolutely loved seeing the volunteers have such inquisitive minds and asked such thoughtful questions to further their knowledge about the trees in Utah. In case you missed this event, keep an eye out for similar ones in the future through our events page.

We would like to thank ChipDrop who sponsored this event. The first ten lucky people who arrived got a stylish and free orange ChipDrop beanie to don and keep off the chill during the hike on Saturday. When you sign up with chipdrop.com, arborists can deliver free, fresh, and local wood chips directly to you and even schools too. Eliminate the usual hassle involved with buying wood chips and sign up with ChipDrop. It is a simple and effective solution to help the overall health of your yard. 

If you have been on social media this fall, you have already seen a number of incredible and colorful fall foliage photos! It's easy enough to find and appreciate but do you know what trees make all those candy colored mix of leaves? 

There are a number of native trees which create brilliant hues of red, orange, yellow, often all on the same tree. The bright colors comes from canyon maple, quaking aspen, scrub oak, Douglas hawthorn, serviceberries, evergreens, and more — each turning in succession. The reds you see most like come from Canyon or Bigtooth Maple (Acer grandidentatum) Sometimes referred to as western sugar maple, it resembles the eastern sugar maple with its brilliant orange-red fall color. Quaking Aspen (Populus tremuloides) Their color can be orange or even orange-red, but usually tends more toward bright yellow. Gambel or Scrub Oak (Quercus gambelii) mostly in the range of orange to red-orange. These three tree species are responsible for most of Utah's fall color. You can learn more about Utah trees and what to plant for great fall colors in your own yard here.

Three factors influence autumn leaf color and the timing of the color change also varies by plant species. The timing of color changes and the onset of falling leaves is primarily regulated by the calendar as nights become longer. None of the other environmental influences such as temperature, rainfall, food supply are as fixed as the regularly increasing length of night during autumn changes.

There are many ways to enjoy the changing leaves and whether you take a scenic drive or plan a hike or fall picnic, your exposure to nature will make you feel better emotionally and physically, reduce blood pressure, heart rate, muscle tension, and stress hormones. What's not love about trees? 

While there are many old trees, the oldest recorded living tree on record is a Great Bristlecone pine, believed to have a lifespan of over 5,000 years. Located in the White Mountains of California, this unnamed tree is considered the oldest living tree in the world. Methuselah, another Bristlecone pine located in Inyo County, California is second on the list, at an age of 4,847 years. And then we have General Sherman, a giant sequoia tree located in the Giant Forest of Sequoia National Park in Tulare County, in the state of California. By volume, it is the largest known living single-stem tree on Earth. It is estimated to be around 2,300 to 2,700 years old. More than 400 acres around the General Sherman Tree underwent a prescribed burn as recently as 2019. Prescribed burns, in which fires are set intentionally and monitored closely, can maintain the health of a forest and prevent dry overgrowth of vegetation, this action may have been the key factor in saving Sherman from the wildfires and after it was carefully wrapped in fire retardant blankets. 

When we talk about the value of a tree it is important to remember that Old-growth forests are one of the few land uses where topsoil is created instead of destroyed. More carbon and nitrogen is retained in an old-growth forest than in younger forests. As for improving water quality and air quality there is nothing better than an old-growth forest. Every community will be enriched by having old-growth forest surrounding them. Community forests are places for recreation and wildlife habitat, also providing essential ecosystem benefits which clean our water and air.

Trees provide numerous environmental, economic, and even health benefits to people on earth. Old-growth forests are valuable, the value of a particular tree species varies with geography, Old-growth forests are often biologically diverse, and home to many rare species, threatened species, endangered species of plants and vulnerable animals. As we watch and protect our forests we can not ignore the benefits of our old trees. General Sherman was worth protecting and beyond value we can assign. In the U.S. there is a rule protecting trees over 21 inches in diameter in six national forests where most American old growth trees exist. 

The September 11 National Day of Service and Remembrance (9/11 Day), is a chance to help others in tribute to those killed and injured on September 11, 2001, first responders, and the countless others who serve to defend the nation’s freedom at home and around the globe.

Tree lovers may be interested to know that a special tree exists that survived at ground zero, a Callery pear tree became known as the “Survivor Tree” after enduring the September 11, 2001 terror attacks at the World Trade Center. In October 2001, planted in the 1970's, a severely damaged tree was discovered at Ground Zero, with snapped roots and burned and broken branches. The tree was removed from the rubble and placed in the care of the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation. After its 9 year recovery and rehabilitation, the tree was returned to the Memorial in 2010. New, smooth limbs extended from the gnarled stumps, creating a visible demarcation between the tree’s past and present. Today, the tree stands as a living reminder of resilience, survival, and rebirth. The Callery pear tree is planted with 225 other swamp white oak trees. The Survivor Tree is a natural symbol of resilience, rebirth, and survival.  

The Callery pear (Pyrus calleryana) produces thousands of five-petal white flowers in early spring before leafing out for the summer. Callery pears are known to be incredibly resistant to disease and blight. 

September 11, 2021, is the 20th Anniversary of that tragic day. Join in, step forward to serve in a remarkable spirit of unity, honor, and compassion. Remember, even a small act of service is a giant act of patriotism. Share your service story and photos, and use #911Day on social media.

Volunteer: 9/11 Utah Day of Service Saturday, September 25th - Plant Trees with TreeUtah and Donate Food to the Olympus Food Pantry

Thinleaf or mountain alder is a common large canyon shrub or tree, of the birch family,  widespread on the banks of streams and on hillsides in the foothills and montain forests to 10,000 feet elevation, and along stream beds. A truly magnificent benefit of alder is their ability to move nitrogen from the atmosphere into the soil. This process is called nitrogen fixing. Nitrogen, the most abundant element in our atmosphere, is crucial to all life on earth. Nitrogen is found in soils and plants, in the water we drink, and in the air we all share and breathe. 

A small amount of nitrogen can be naturally fixed when lightning form above strikes and provides the energy needed for N2 compound to react with oxygen, producing nitrogen oxide. This nitrogen formula then enter soils through rain or snow. Most nitrogen fixation occurs naturally, in the soil, by bacteria. Some bacteria attach to plant roots and have a symbiotic relationship with the plant. The bacteria get energy through photosynthesis and, in return, they fix nitrogen into a form the plant needs to build healthy tissue. Alder tolerates a wide variety of soil textures and pH but is most commonly grows in moist soils but is well-adapted to cold, "heavy" soils, thinleaf alder is an indicator of productive sites and common in many riparian shrub-lands. 

Leaves alternate; simple; ovate-oblong; 2" to 4" long; deciduous; sometimes slightly lobed; doubly serrate; thin; glabrous; dark green above, pale yellow-green beneath; petiole short. Alder wood in general is light and soft, white to pinkish color, and unnoticeable heartwood; often used in furniture, veneer, and carvings. Because it is evenly textured wood that has a strong reputation for being an excellent wood for machining, Alder wood can be nailed without splitting and long lasting hardness. Its grain is better than cherry and makes for a nice finish. 

The next time you are outside see if you can identify an alder, take time and thank it for it's good nitrogen fixing job! 

As climate change intensifies, so do natural disasters such as wildfires. Recent fires like those surrounding Utah have burned longer and hotter than usual. The recent Parleys Canyon Fire here in Utah hit closer to home than the national fires we have been surrounded by, Park City Fire District crews and other fire personnel were deployed to neighborhood to protect structures in Summit Park over the canyon crestline. One of the things that draws people to live in Summit Park is its mountainous seclusion of forested hillside, this vegitation close to motorized highways create an unfortunate threat. 

While a real threat to structures, wildfire season in recent years have destroyed millions of trees. Many areas have been burned so severely that natural regeneration is not possible, making replanting necessary. Restoration is a long-term process, from assessing damage to growing seedlings to planting them over the course of many years, 

TreeUtah is committed to restoring and preserving healthy ecosystems along Utah’s urbanized Wasatch Front. Native trees are important habitat for the wildlife and will ensure these animals can continue to thrive here. Planting young native trees will also limit the impact invasive species can have on this critical habitat area. The canyons of the Wasatch Mountains are the main source of water and recreation for hundreds of thousands of people in Salt Lake County. They are also a critical habitat on the edge of the Great Salt Lake Desert for many species of wildlife. The ecosystems of this vital mountain range are under pressure from the expanding population of the Wasatch Front. In addition to continued support of state and federal forest restoration efforts, TreeUtah pledges commitment to restoring critical community landscapes and natural forestlands devastated by wildfire. 

You can help protect your home and stop the spread of wildland fires by following theseeight steps. “Remember – Only you can prevent forest fires,” is a critical message. While some wildfires start from lightning strikes and other natural causes, a majority are due to human activity such as the Parleys Canyon fire with a cars faulty catalytic converter. 

As the globe heats up, cities across America are moving to increase their tree canopy to mitigate urban heat island effect. "Urban Heat Islands" occur when cities have dense concentrations of pavement, buildings, and other surfaces that absorb and retain heat from the sun. We have seen this not only in Utah but across the nation, this climate change will lead to more frequent, more severe, and longer heatwaves during summer months and making a healthy tree canopy all the more important.

Have you noticed yourself on a hot summer day choosing to walk on the shaded side of the path or sidewalk? If you have ever crossed the street to walk on the tree-shaded side you are already familiar with urban heat island and what it feels like, usually up to 30 degrees cooler! Planting shade trees on the south and west faces of your house can reduce winter heating bills by up to 15% and summer cooling bills by up to 50%. Studies have shown that well-treed businesses project a warm, welcoming and inviting atmosphere for shoppers who tend to linger and spend more time shopping, resulting in some cases in a business increase of up to 11%.

For instance, the National Weather Service data shows that, in four of the past five Julys in Salt Lake City, 25 days or more were over 90 degrees. Meanwhile, climate scientists say Utah is warming about twice as fast as the global average.

One of the easiest ways trees in urban areas can help diminish heat is shade. Trees keep urban neighborhoods cooler, reduce air conditioning bills and, most importantly, protect the most vulnerable populations during heat waves. Elderly people, young children and lower-income or on the streets population are especially at risk. Trees also remove heat-trapping carbon dioxide from the air, they absorb harmful pollutants like nitrogen oxide, nitrogen dioxide, and sulfur dioxide, also releasing oxygen. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) reports that shaded areas can be up to 20-45 degrees cooler than areas that lack shade. This means trees are particularly valuable along the Wasatch Front and other areas in Utah that struggle with ozone and particulate matter pollution.

That lack of tree cover can make a neighborhood hotter, and a joint investigation by NPR and the University of Maryland's Howard Center for Investigative Journalism found just that: Low-income areas in dozens of major U.S. cities are more likely to be hotter than their wealthier counterparts, and those areas are disproportionately communities of color. People who live in poorer, historically "minority" communities, where many residents rent and have less ability to landscape or plant trees, are more at risk of heat-related illnesses than the people in more well-off communities. 

Besides tackling urban heat, planting more native trees in cities comes with lots of bonuses, like food resources for wildlife, better water quality in our urban waterways, green corridors that will store carbon, and spaces that people will want to spend time in and enjoy as a community. 

There are some simple and effective nature-based solutions for cooling our cities. Planting trees in our state's urban areas is an invaluable investment for cities, people, and our precious environment. 

TreeUtah encourages you to be water-aware. Since summers in Utah are hot and dry, it is important to make sure your trees are getting enough water. Due to differing elevations, microclimates, and tree species, it is not possible to recommend an exact amount of water that any given tree needs, but follow the guidelines below to be sure your trees have the water they need.

Infrequent, deep watering is more beneficial than frequent, shallow watering. Unestablished trees should be watered 1-2 times per week to a depth of 2-4.” Deep watering ensures that the tree roots grow deeper in the soil, which allows them to be more drought-tolerant later in the tree’s life.

How to Check if Trees Need Water

Over-watering a tree can be just as harmful as under-watering, so be sure to check before watering. Use a garden trowel or even your hand to create a small, narrow trench near the trunk of the tree. The trench should be 2-4″ deep. If the soil is moist to the touch, the tree doesn’t need water. If the soil is dry, give the tree water.

Watering Newly Planted and Non-Established Trees

The first 2 years of a tree’s life is critical for survival. The tree is establishing its root system in the soil and is sensitive to stressors like heat and drought. Water a newly planted tree immediately after planting and routinely check the soil moisture often to be sure the tree has enough water for the next 2 growing seasons. After the tree is established, it will have an easier time adjusting to heat and drought conditions.

Gator Bags

Another easy way to be sure your unestablished tree has enough water is to use a gator bag. This is a zip-up bag that goes around the trunk of the young tree. Fill the bag with water and it will slowly drip out of the bag to water the tree. The bag will need to be filled about once every 5-7 days.

Look here for drought-tolerant trees: https://treeutah.org/tree-guide#climate-adapted-for-a-hotter-and-drier-future and here: https://cwel.usu.edu/water-wise-plants

Due to the severe drought right now, we recommend watering 2 times per week in Northern Utah and 3 times a week in Southern Utah to help extend the water supply. The goal during extreme drought conditions isn’t lush landscapes but rather “survival watering” to keep high-value plants alive like trees and shrubs. Grass is resilient and can survive with as little as 1″ of water a month. It won’t be green and will enter dormancy during times of drought and high temperatures but will recover when conditions improve. Thank you for doing your part to #SlowTheFlow! Find more drought info at: Drought.utah.gov Find drought tips at: SlowTheFlow.org

 SALT LAKE CITY, Utah – September’s windstorm destroyed around 1,000 trees within the boundaries of Salt Lake City, and volunteers used Arbor Day to help repair the city’s parks.

“We kind of work as matchmakers to get the funds for trees from donations and then we get the trees at wholesale, bring them in and work to find parks like this that are in need of new plantings,” said Amy May, executive director for nonprofit Tree Utah. The group usually has a pretty busy schedule this time of year.

KSL caught up with these volunteers at Liberty Park where they were planting a dozen shingle oak, London plane and hawthorn trees that will grow here, hopefully for generations to come. But these roots won’t take hold without nourishment — and that’s where you come in. Tree Utah needs your help.

“We just act as a partner to facilitate as many tree plantings as we possibly can throughout the season and it’s all made possible with donations from individuals and corporate partners and grants,” May said.

So you can volunteer your time or make a donation to this nonprofit that truly is planting for the future. We may not get to appreciate these newly planted trees in their fullness, but our children and grandchildren might.

Liberty Park was the subject on Earth Day but in the last week, May and her army of tree planters visited Fairmont, Rose and Rosewood parks too — and they aren’t slowing down. 

https://ksltv.com/461060/arbor-day-helps-slc-parks-recover-from-september-windstorm/

Progress is being made at the EcoGarden, help out and meet TreeUtah's fantastic EcoGarden Coordinator, Julie Williams!

This ever-evolving EcoGarden was first laid out in 2005, under the direction of renowned permaculture expert and author, the late Toby Hemenway, and former TreeUtah director Vaughn Lovejoy. Since then it has been sustained by dedicated volunteers, neighbors, and TreeUtah staff. The land the garden sits on was originally intended as an overflow retention basin for the Jordan River. When TreeUtah decided to do an EcoGarden, they considered putting it at Bend in the River Park along the Provo-Jordan River Parkway Trail. However, the land was too toxic with mercury and lead to grow anything edible. The plot by the Day-Riverside library seemed to be the perfect solution.

the EcoGarden is a community gathering space. The area is not fenced off from the neighborhood. Rather it is an inviting space, with benches, picnic tables, and a shade structure grown over with grapevines. We encourage residents of the neighborhood to utilize the space for gatherings, quiet contemplation, and of course as a source of food.

The guiding principle of permaculture is to cultivate food, medicine, and other useful plants in harmony with and in imitation of the surrounding ecosystem. Traditional farming techniques prioritize annual plants and require a continual input of nutrients, pesticides, and new plants, permaculture relies on a thoughtful mix perennials to create a more closed self-regulating and sustainable system.

The garden is designed around fourteen guilds or smaller plant communities. These are each centered around a fruit or nut tree. Each tree is planted with a specific mix of shrubs, flowers, grasses, herbs, and native plants that complement one another through their unique characteristics. Some plants might fix nitrogen in the soil, making it available to the surrounding plants. While others perhaps attract pollinators that will benefit the entire group. A third species may discourage pests or invasive plants with the scent of its flowers or the oils in its leaves.

We are now doing weekly volunteer days at our EcoGarden every Monday from 4-6pm! Come decompress after work and help us with planting, watering, weeding, mulching, composting, & maintaining the guilds of our beautiful EcoGarden, a permaculture orchard located next to the Day-Riverside Library. A healthy ecosystem necessarily includes the people who live in it, join us in our work in creating sustainable communities.

Please register in advance so we know who to look for and what work can be done! And, if you are interested in being part of the EcoGarden community, please contact us.

Volunteer with us! Volunteers truly are the heartwood of TreeUtah and make our work possible. Thousands of dedicated and hardworking people like you help us each year to accomplish our goals. 

We always welcome helping hands at the EcoGarden located next door to the Day Riverside Library at 1575 West 1000 North, TreeUtah’s EcoGarden is a community resource along the Jordan River in Rose Park that demonstrates how we can utilize trees in urban landscapes for gardening, food, and to benefit our social and natural environments.

There are a number of different projects in need of volunteers at the EcoGarden such as watering, weeding, mulching, composting, maintaining the guilds, and picking up trash. If you are interested in being part of the EcoGarden community, please contact us. EcoGarden workdays will be posted on the events calendar. Please check dates and listings frequently in Spring/Summer/Fall.

We have met so many wonderful volunteers and interesting groups of people who organize to come out to help plant. Some are small hiking groups all the way to large corporations, and then back to a small scouting group, looking to do good and give back to the community! Tree Planting is a fun and unique way to give back to the local community and make Utah a healthier, greener place to live, work, and play. Your business, church group, or community group is welcome to join us at one of our public tree plantings (for free!). Alternatively, you can sponsor your own special event. Many businesses choose to sponsor a planting or stewardship project as an annual team-building event or community service project. 

Setting up special events and purchasing trees requires a lot of time and effort. The required minimum donation to sponsor tree plantings will be based on the number of trees to be planted. Each event is different depending on your vision and budget. We are excited to work with you and see your ideas come to life!

Events include the following benefits to your organization

• Choose your own date and time
• Recognition of your commitment to sustainability on social media, press releases, and on our website and e-newsletter
• Team building by spending a few hours outdoors at a beautiful location
• Your team just needs to show up ready to plant and we do the rest; even including coffee and bagels if you want.
• You will get dirty and tired, but leave inspired!

Teams will help plant large landscape trees in public places such as parks and other open spaces or for restoration volunteers will assist in planting native seedlings to restore natural ecosystems. To learn more about participating in a tree planting, please contact us.

In 1663, Robert Boyle a chemist in America informed Europeans about the tree in the new world that produced a sweet substance. Other accounts say John Smith was among the first settlers who remarked about the Native Americans’ sugar processing and the fact that they used the product for barter. When we pour that sweet liquid gold on our pancakes we often think of big, tall Vermont maples being tapped for syrup, like Pa in Little House books by Laura Ingalls Wilder. However, those of us in Utah and the Rocky Mountain region do indeed have a native maple treeThe bigtooth maple (Acer grandidentatum), gives the best fall color display of any tree. Most of the beautiful yellow, orange, and red colorations in Utah's canyons in the early fall come from this native tree. And because it is native to Utah it can withstand some drought. This tree is a broadleaf tree with a spreading, rounded crown. Its height will average about 35 feet, and the trunk diameter averages 9 inches at maturity. 

This maple goes by many different names including, Lost maple, Sabinal maple, Western sugar maple, Uvalde bigtooth maple, Canyon maple, Southwestern bigtooth maple, Plateau bigtooth maple, and Limerock maple. Related to the sugar maple, it was indeed a source of sugar and syrup for the early Mormon pioneers in Utah. However, unlike the maples back east it takes 40 gallons of sugar maple sap to make one gallon of syrup and the sap is much less concentrated and takes 160 gallons of sap to get one gallon of syrup. So you can see it is not quite the same high producer as other maples and never could have produced enough for trade in this region. 

Somewhat common, it can be seen in canyon areas, around Park City trails and university campuses. Its medium size makes canyon maple a good tree for small- or large-scale residential landscapes, parks or other open areas, and street plantings where the parking strip width is at least four feet (six feet is better). With its toughness and better adaptability relative to non-native maples, canyon maple has great landscape potential. 

Trees that stick up through the snowpack can help to hold the snowpack in place, slowing or stopping an avalanche. A thick, mature grove of evergreen trees can anchor a slab effectively! 

Trees protect communities along the Wasatch against landslides and avalanches. Forests are an affordable and ecologically friendly means of protection. Both standing and fallen trees stabilize the snowpack and prevent avalanches and can reduce the size of the snow slab that is released. In the forest, snow falls from the trees, and the canopy supports the energy balance of changing snow layers. Because the forest snowpack is subject to often unseen inconsistencies weak layers can form and can avalanche naturally or when disturbed. So a healthy and thriving surrounding forest is able to stem and buffer some avalanches. If the trees can withstand the tremendous rushing force of an avalanche, it loses energy and its progress towards the valley below.

More research and information is being gathered around the world, numerous forest avalanches have been examined, documented, and even simulated to find answers and solutions to mitigating avalanche damage. Tree anchors need to be thick enough to be effective. The more thickly spaced, the more effective. Sparse anchors, especially combined with a soft slab, have very little effect. Spruce and fir trees with branches frozen into the slab are a much more effective anchor than a tree with few low branches such as an aspen or lodgepole pine. Also, snow falling off of trees tends to stabilize the snowpack around trees.

And recently a skier caught in an avalanche that killed four people in Utah survived by clinging to a tree through the onslaught of rushing snow and later helped save two people. Winters have been especially deadly in the U.S., with avalanches coming amid increasing interest in backcountry runs as skiers try to avoid crowded resorts during the pandemic. In the US, avalanches kill 25-30 people and injure many more each winter. Some days are dangerous and some days are not … learning about avalanches will help you decide when, where, and how to visit the backcountry. Learn more about safety at: https://avalanche.org/avalanche-education/ or at https://utahavalanchecenter.org/

It’s time to start thinking about a thoughtful and meaningful Valentine’s gift...so why not express how much you care by showing love for the environment at the same time. In place of chocolates or jewelry, try planting or purchasing a tree in someone's honor. One way that people can demonstrate their love for others is to plant a tree because the earth is in need of more green spaces, especially in urban areas. This is a gesture that will be remembered for generations to come, especially for people who understand the value of trees, and after all what is a stroll with your "Sweetheart" without a lane of tree cover above? 

TreeUtah and the Sugar House Park Authority are pleased to present the Commemorative and Memorial Tree Program at Sugar House Park. This program offers people the opportunity to honor friends and loved ones through the planting of a tree in Sugar House Park, adding to the beauty of Salt Lake City’s greatest landmarks. Requests for particular tree varieties will be considered; however, Sugar House Park Authority has final approval. Conifers or a Broadleaf/Deciduous will be planted. Plantings will occur during the spring (April 1st — June 30th) or fall (September 1st — November 30th). Small ceremonies may be arranged by the donor and groups are encouraged to participate in the physical planting itself. Information will be provided once a donor has made a commitment to planting a tree at Sugar House Park.

All gifts are processed through TreeUtah, a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization. Individuals or groups wishing to have a commemorative or memorial tree planted at Sugar House Park should contact TreeUtah’s Planting Coordinator, Ian by email at planting@treeutah.org. 

Trees provide the very necessities we rely upon. They clean our air, protect our drinking water, create healthy, loving communities to nurture the soul.

TreeUtah is committed to restoring and preserving healthy ecosystems along Utah’s urbanized Wasatch Front. For over 30 years TreeUtah has organized plantings of thousands of native trees and shrubs along the Jordan River corridor and Wasatch Mountain Canyons. Maintaining the ecological health of our waterways and open spaces is critical for sustaining wildlife habitat, as well as ensuring clean water, clean air, and the overall health of Salt Lake Valley residents. In addition, our restoration work builds civic involvement and a sense of community.

Restoration is the act of repairing or renewing something. The Jordan River Parkway Trail is the most popular recreation trail in Salt Lake County. The Jordan River waterway stretches over 50 miles, from Utah Lake to the Great Salt Lake. The trail and river are used throughout the year by over 100,000 community members for various outdoor activities. The native birds and wildlife are an integral part of the beauty of this critical area. TreeUtah is planting native trees at different sites along the Jordan River corridor. Native trees are important habitat for the wildlife and will ensure these animals can continue to thrive here. 

The canyons of the Wasatch Mountains are the main source of water and recreation for hundreds of thousands of people in Salt Lake County. They are also a critical habitat on the edge of the Great Salt Lake Desert for many species of wildlife. The ecosystems of this vital mountain range are under pressure from the expanding population of the Wasatch Front. TreeUtah is working with local ski areas to ensure these ecosystems can sustain life for generations to come. By planting thousands of native trees at ski areas, we are helping to preserve the recreation opportunities, the wildlife habitat, and the pristine water quality. Conservation and reforestation efforts started in Little Cottonwood Canyon in 1933. The Alta Environmental Center carries on that tradition today. Harvesting seed from the ski area for revegetation and restoration efforts takes work but generally results in more successful plant and tree growth since the seed came from Alta. And, Brighton Ski Resort commits to the development and implementation of a sustainability program designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Planting young native trees will also limit the impact invasive species can have on this critical habitat area. Seeds for plants and trees are harvested at the end of every summer.

Contact us for more information about joining us as a restoration volunteer.

Join TreeUtah Arborist, Ian Peisner, for a skiing and riding tour through Brighton’s forests.  You will be introduced to the trees and plants that make up this community, learn about the ecosystem, discuss the past and future of this landscape, and find out how you can help in our efforts to preserve our forest! 

We will also have the chance to safely visit with some amazing individuals!  Tours are free to pass holders, will last about an hour, and require intermediate skiing/riding ability. Space is limited.  Masks are required.  Tours will meet at 1pm on Thursday 1/14 at the bottom of the Snake Creek Lift. A great way to get out of the house this Thursday!

When you first encounter the bristlecone pine, it's easy to see that these trees must live long lives. Each trunk bend and twist speaks of a hearty and beaten growth to where it stands ever resilient.

Rocky Mountain bristlecone pine, Pinus aristata the oldest living example is 2,500 years old on black mountain in Colorado (related to Pinus longaeva, the famously old bristlecone pines in California). The limited range “Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest” is located in the White Mountains on the eastern edge of California. The grove is home to the famous 4,848-year-old Methuselah tree and to another that is an incredible 5,067 years old. They are the two oldest non-clonal organisms on Earth, the term means they don’t reproduce through cloning, making their trunks as old as their roots. Bristlecone pine is also known as "Wind Timber", "Hickory Pine", "Krummholz" and "Foxtail Pine." Often they will die in sections and as the roots become exposed they will dry out and die giving it distinct twists. The tree is interesting because the needles stay on the limb for over 40 years, unlike most other pines, which shed their needles every few years. 

Native in scattered mountainous areas in the interior West, including Mountains of Utah and the Great Basin. Bristlecones are only found in six states. Slow growing and very long-lived (over 4,000 years old) on dry, tough sites. This hearty tree is seldom used but should be more often; you can even find them at local nurseries. very slow-growing; nice dark green color and interesting, sometimes contorted form; needs little or no supplemental water once established. Bristlecones have 5 needles per fascicle and can grow to be 40-60 feet in height. Don't try planting bristlecone pine trees in areas with clay or heavy soil, good drainage and lots of sunlight is essential!

As you ponder the twisted beauty of the weathered and gnarled trunks, take a moment to reflect on all they have withstood after 5,000 years of wind, sun, snow, and rain! Because these trees are thousands of years old, we can understand what the environment was like thousands of years ago and gain valuable information on climate.

The sight of snow and frost on trees in winter looks picture perfect outdoors and sometimes you can hear the sharp crack of trunks adjusting or the plunk of heavy snow descending from branches. We notice the beauty and sight but how do trees survive all the seasonal changes, especially in winter?  

Trees first slow down their cellular growth, focusing their energies on survival through the sometimes long winter. Trees go through a process like hibernation called dormancy, this dormancy keeps them alive during the cold temperatures, everything within the tree slows down; metabolism, energy consumption, growth and more. Trees do not die during the winter; they just take a break. Since there is less sunlight in the winter and the tree can't produce as much food, trees must conserve their energy for future seasons. While trees are dormant on the surface, above ground, the underground tree system made up of roots is busy at work growing, searching, and retaining nutrients to help get the tree through the winter to have enough resources available into its next active season. 

Impeded growth messages in the tree, which saves a lot of energy to stall or impede growth during the winter, during this time the tree isn't making any new food for energy. The tree will also begin to change how it deals with water within its tissues, while the water in the cells may get below freezing, it can’t form crystals so trees rarely freeze over and die. Trees transform starch into sugars that act as a sort of antifreeze. 

Deciduous trees shed their leaves because of snow, as well as cold, and to halt all growth. For evergreens, like pine and spruce, leaves have evolved into long thin needles. These needles are covered in a waxy substance which helps reduce moisture loss and damage from colder temperatures. Evergreen needles and even the bark of some trees, such as the poplar tree, can still make food through photosynthesis, even when temperatures are below freezing. Many evergreens have branches that are flexible enough to bend under the weight of heavy snow, this prevents branches from breaking and damaging this trunk. Flexible branches that bend downwards can also shed snow, unfortunately sometimes right on top of our heads!

Trees are incredibly adaptable and capable when it comes to surviving winter weather. Making sure your trees receive proper water and fertilization during the spring, summer and fall can ensure they’re ready to face the winter. Proper mulching can also protect roots during freezing weather. Many people plant trees in the fall. The roots won’t have much time to establish before winter. Several inches of appropriate mulch for the species of tree can help. So can installing guards or braces to keep the tree upright until spring.

Trees in winter are incredible, they can adapt to freezing temperatures and provide us with warmth and safety! 

"Planting trees started as voluntary work for one of my classes at the U. Now the early, cold morning sounded a little bit hard, especially the colder the mornings got. But I cannot stress enough how refreshing it was to be out. With the strange year that we have had with Covid-19, being able to not only see, but interact with other people from all different types of background was so refreshing. Aiding Tree Utah in planting trees, started off as voluntary work that had to be done for a University course, but I can honestly say that as the winter months hopefully fly by, I will be getting back in contact with Tree Utah to have more volunteer opportunities. I can honestly say that planting trees was not only so beneficial for Utah, but it brought so much to me as an individual I will now be making it a part of my every yearly activities." TreeUtah Volunteer -Laurie-Anne Truchon-Thibeault

By Mary Brown Malouf November 2020

It’s been a grievous year for trees. The Big Wind of 2020 destroyed more than 1,000 trees in Salt Lake City, leaving Mayor Erin Mendenhall with a deficit—her campaign promise was to plant4,000 trees in Rose Park. Of course, the West altogether was deforested by fire this year. And trees are life for humans—they hold the earth together and create the air we breathe. This year, instead of buying a dead tree in honor of the holidays, buy a live one. Let it live in your home for a few weeks, then make it a gift, to the earth and to all of us.

If you don’t think buying a live tree is in your cards this holiday season, there are still ways you can help support the trees. TreeUtah plants large trees in public spaces such as city parks and playgrounds. You can help TreeUtah by volunteering to plant even more trees in communities across Utah.

Fun fact: Quaking Aspen is Utah’s state tree. Pando, an aspen grove in Sevier County, is the largest living thing on Earth—a metaphor for our time, because aspens grow in colonies, all connected by their root systems. But Pando is possibly dying from mule deer predation. Many landscape designers warn homeowners not to plant aspen because “they’ll take over” your yard. We can think of many worse fates than being surrounded by aspen trees.

https://www.saltlakemagazine.com/trees-christmas/

By Michelle Deininger

When TreeUtah prides itself on the carnival-like atmosphere that surrounds its tree planting events. Since forming in 1989, they’ve included music, food, extra tools and gear to share, and leaders who educate volunteers—often 50-100 people—about trees and climate issues.

“We ultimately are about getting trees in the ground to sequester carbon, and creating inclusive events so people can come and learn and grow along with the trees they help plant,” said TreeUtah Executive Director Amy May.

As one of Park City Community Foundation’s Climate Fund grantees this year, TreeUtah is now building on that legacy while adapting to 2020’s Covid restrictions (no food, no tool-sharing, masks, and smaller groups). It’s all for a good cause.

Park City is part of a coalition of mountain towns working together to aggressively reduce carbon emissions to net-zero by the year 2030. The capacity of trees to sequester carbon from the atmosphere as they grow makes tree planting an important process in the age of climate warming.

Using its $50,000 grant, TreeUtah has hosted educational community events throughout Summit County. In spring they planted 27 Narrowleaf Cottonwoods in East Canyon Creek, and “virtually” planted trees at schools with teachers working while students watched by video.

For Earth Day, they gave trees away, then supervised their planting in residential yards and park strips. And in a partnership with Park City High School, students helped plant 200 trees and woody perennials around campus in August. More projects are planned for fall.

“The grant has helped us connect with the community in a much broader way than we could have little by little,” May said. “It’s allowed us to prioritize plantings in Summit County.”

Just how much does planting trees help the climate? The exact amount of carbon sequestration per tree planted on earth varies by species, size, location, and other factors. The U.S. Forest Service uses this rule of thumb: Every mature tree cools the planet as much as 20 room-sized air conditioners every day.

Tree planting also adds to natural beauty, and connects residents to their environment as a living, breathing entity, May said. She is excited about TreeUtah’s growth, and urges community members to “get involved however you can, even if you don’t want to get that dirty. Do something meaningful!”

The Park City Climate Fund was established in 2019 to foster high-impact projects in greater Park City that have the potential to make a lasting impact here and have the ability to scale in other mountain communities. The first Climate Fund grants were awarded in February 2020 to Recycle Utah, TreeUtah, and Utah Clean Energy, and more will be coming soon.

Long ago, naturalist Donald Peattie predicted the real glory of the White Fir. "Rather does the future of this tree lie in its value as an ornamental," And we might add a great Christmas tree!

White or concolor fir is native to the central and southern Rocky Mountains, including Utah. Not only is it beautiful but it is one of the most adaptable firs. This is an evergreen tree, keeping its foliage year-round. It's blue-green needles, sometimes confused with blue spruce, curve outward and upward on branches and, when crushed, emit a lemon scent. White Fir essential oil can be used topically or aromatically create calming, stabilizing, and even energizing effects, with a clean, crisp aroma. 

The 2" to 3" long needles are silver-blue to silver-green in color. Resinous blisters can be found on the thin, smooth bark that becomes furrowed with age. This tree can reach heights of 150' with a diameter up to 4'. White fir prefers moist, cool, protected sites at elevations of 3,000' to 11,200' and can commonly be found in mountain forests. This tree grows at a slow to medium rate, with height increases of anywhere from less than 12" to 24" per year. Fir needles are softer to the touch than spruce needles, which is one of the best ways to tell them apart from spruces. It has also become a major component of the Christmas tree industry. Grouse like to eat the buds and needles and find white fir a good roosting tree. The seeds are eaten by squirrels, rodents, chickadees, crossbills and Clark's nutcrackers. Deer browse on seedlings, buds and needles, and porcupines gnaw on the bark.

Landscape Use: Very desirable tree that needs some protection to do well on windy, exposed sites in Utah's valleys. Does not seem to like high soil pH. 

As you take your fall season drive looking for the brilliant changing colors in Utah's mountains the sight of the western larch (Larix occidentalis) and subalpine larch (Larix lyallii) are some of the most unique and bright trees you'll encounter and they have no leaves! Larch trees are conifers that are deciduous. That means that they have needles like an evergreen tree, but those needles turn bright gold and drop every fall just like a deciduous tree.

Mid-October in Utah is the best time of year to see the larches in their full color. The bright glow of the golden larch is the season’s last light as fall color fades to snowy white and the long lull of winter envelops the park. The larch is a secret magician, quietly blending in with the evergreens. But wait a few months into fall and the larch commands the landscape stage, its golden glow blazing then needles drop and leaving branches twig bare. Very desirable tree with beautiful bark and spectacular color changes in fall.

A little history research produced a fascinating find on the Western Larch in Utah, an excerpt from the U.S. Forest Service Uinta-Wasatch-Cache National Forest:

"In 1907, The Salt Lake Herald reported that seeds of Western Larch were sown at the Wasatch Nursery. In 1912, the Herald reported that the Wasatch National Forest received a 2-ounce package of “high toned and aristocratic” Siberian larch seeds from the estate of Count Max von Sivers of Roemershof, Russia to be planted at the nursery. In 1913, the Herald reported that Count von Siver’s European larch seeds had sprouted, were to be planted that summer, and were the first larch trees in Utah. The Forest Service has not verified which larch species have taken root in Big Cottonwood Canyon as the agency was also collecting western larch seeds during this period.

In addition to the two small stands planted at Spruces Campground, a few more larch trees planted by the nursery workers have been spotted in Big Cottonwood Canyon. When the golden aspen leaves have fallen in Big Cottonwood Canyon, two stands of yellow/orange larch trees become prominent in late October on the north-facing slope adjacent to Spruces Campground. Spruces Campground was the former site of the Wasatch Nursery, which operated from 1906-1920 to grow seedlings to be planted on the newly created Salt Lake Forest Reserve in an effort to reforest the city watershed which had been impacted by logging, grazing, and mining. The nursery was charged with conducting “urgent forestry experiments” to determine which tree species could grow in the canyons. These larch stands are a remnant of the Wasatch Nursery, having survived over 100 years. Larch are one of the few conifer species that shed their needles in late autumn. These are the only known larch on the Uinta-Wasatch-Cache National Forest."

To review; several species of larch are native to the northern U.S. but others were introduced from Europe. Larches are large and tall trees that reach 50-80 feet. This evergreen has deciduous needles that are up to 1 1/4 inch long. Larch needles are light green in color most of the year which then turn yellow in autumn before shedding. Cones are up to 1 1/2 inches long, egg-shaped and stalkless. Fun historical fact, Native Americans once tied the slender roots of Larch trees together to use as strips of bark for their canoes. More information on Utah conifers can be found here. 

We hope you enjoy this fall season driving, hiking and wandering adventures, and don't forget to look for the bright colors of the conifers too!

Thank you all for joining us today. As you know, because you thoroughly covered it... and you lived it, Salt Lake City’s urban forest was hit hard by the hurricane-force windstorm on September 8. 

We estimate that more than 1,500 trees were lost in our public spaces, and that doesn’t include the thousands of trees on private property that were toppled.

In addition to the devastating property damage, and some injuries that were reported, we’ve all been saddened at the heartbreaking sight of 100-foot tall trees lying on their sides. 

Our westside lost more than 100 Modesto Ash trees from neighborhood parkstrips, which account for the majority of shade in those neighborhoods. 

At the City Cemetery, we lost more than 250 trees, dozens of which were 80-foot tall Spruce trees, and one of the most beautiful Austrian Pine trees in the City. 

At Liberty Park, we lost a Cottonwood Tree whose trunk was more than 4 feet in diameter, and at Washington Square we lost a Giant Sequioa -- the same species that grows in California and lives for hundreds of years. 

As a certified tree-lover, this has been difficult, especially since we know the benefits that trees and tree canopies provide residents, including reducing air pollution, conserving water and reducing erosion, creating shade and places to gather, and increasing property values. Trees are indispensable. But luckily, they aren’t completely irreplaceable. 

I’m excited to announce today that we are partnering with TreeUtah to ReTree SLC. 

It will be a joint effort to replace thousands of trees. We’ve heard from residents eager to help, and this is the answer. At ReTreeSLC.com, those interested can donate to TreeUtah and volunteer as the replanting efforts get underway this fall and beyond.

We’re excited to have Rocky Mountain Power and Ivory Homes on board with us as well, to support this initiative. 

Funds raised will directly help purchase trees that are selected to be hardy in the city’s urban environment for generations to come.

ReTree SLC is in addition to the City’s pledge to plant 1,000 extra trees in 2020, a goal that was in place well before the storm, and that we’re on track to meet in spite of it. We know how important the urban forest is to our city, and we’re committed not only to replanting it, but expanding it. 

Donations can be made at retreeslc

 Salt Lake City Mayor Erin Mendenhall and TreeUtah today announced ReTree SLC, a joint effort to replace thousands of trees lost throughout the city during the windstorm on September 7 and 8. The effort’s donation portal launched today and funds raised will go toward the replanting of the over 3,000 public trees that were damaged or lost within Salt Lake City boundaries.  

“All of us at TreeUtah are saddened by the devastating loss of trees during the storm, but it just heightens our dedication to plant as many trees as possible toward a healthy urban forest. The trees we plant now will provide a better quality of life in Salt Lake City for generations.” -Amy May, TU Executive Director

Trees in Salt Lake City parks were hit especially hard during the storm, with Liberty Park losing 69 trees and the Salt Lake City Cemetery losing 255 trees.

Donors to ReTree SLC have the ability to make single donations or sign up for an ongoing monthly contribution, and they can specify that their donation go towards replanting in a specific park, or wherever a tree is needed most.

Funds raised will directly help purchase trees that are selected to be hardy in the city’s urban environment for generations to come.

ReTree SLC will also include a volunteer effort through TreeUtah for the public to assist in planting trees. Everyone who contributes will be informed of planting opportunities via email and all TreeUtah events HERE.

Donations can be made to TreeUtah by clicking HERE!

If you come across a tree with an arrangement of sharp thorns along its bark don’t be afraid, you've just met the highly adaptive Gleditsia triacanthos, otherwise known as the honey locust.  The honey locust is an attractive and useful tree that is commonly planted as a landscape tree for its beauty and toughness. It is a deciduous tree in the legume family, native to central North America where it is mostly found in rich moist soil of river valleys. Its leaves are delicate and narrow, arranged in an alternating compound form that allows more light to reach the ground and can permit other trees or plants to flourish underneath its canopy.

In the fall the leaves can turn to a vibrant golden yellow. A fast grower the honey locust commonly reaches heights of around 70 to 100 feet with a medium-long life of 120 years. Often honeylocust trees planted in cities are thornless and often seedless and transplants easily even in less than ideal soil including; compacted, road salt, alkaline soil, heat, or drought-affected. The long slender pods you see are 15 to 40 cm long with sticky and sweet bean-like seeds.

You may think the name means this tree produces some type of sap but the honey locust is not a significant sap plant, rather,  the sweetness is found in the legume pulp, which was used for food and medicine, and tea by Native American people. Additionally, the seeds can be used as a coffee substitute and can even be fermented. And fun fact: In the past, the hard thorns of the younger trees were used as nails and the wood itself was used to fashion treenails for shipbuilding.

The honey locust is easy to grow and requires very little maintenance. So easy in fact, you could try growing one as a quick and fun learning project with kids or as your own project!

Parts of Utah lost a lot of trees last week and it may feel different in your neighborhood or local park without them. We don't often get hurricane-force winds in Utah but strong winds can occasionally pop up every few years with the right conditions. To help us better understand how to recover damaged landscapes, here is what we found experts recommend on tree care, from places which get these high winds often, think Florida hurricanes!

After a wind storm, it's important to take care of safety hazards first. Hazards to look for include broken tree branches that are hanging from the tree and leaning trees and anything near power lines. Careful pruning is often needed after a storm, be aware, and wear protective clothing. Trim above ragged breaks on small stems, and remove entire branches when the main structural branches break. The most important task is removing damaged limbs and branches on trees and shrubs. Make a clean cut at the base of the branch where it is attached to the next largest branch. A clean smooth cut allows the branch to heal itself by sealing to keep wood-decay from entering and spreading. A good rule of thumb is to remove and take down trees with over half their branches damaged. After you have assessed damages you can gather and use or donate any collected wood. 

If you have had problems with smaller trees being damaged after extreme storm winds, and you want to try and save those types of trees, you’ll be happy to know that a lot of trees that are down can be reset and rescued. Below are some tips that you can use to help with saving the trees.

• Cover your trees’ roots so that they’re moist until you’re able to work more on them.
• Work on pruning your tree’s root system so that it can be put back into the ground. You should also dig out the soil under the exposed roots, being careful not to break the roots, this is very important! If roots are broken replanting will most likely not work.
• Right your tree and stake it, leaving the stake there for a minimum of 6 months.
• Water the tree each day for 2-4 weeks. If it rains, less will be okay. Keep the area of the roots moist for a few months.

• Before removing damaged plants, wait three to six months to allow them to attempt to recover. 

Take some time as you go on a walk and notice how the face of the landscape has changed, think of ways to restore your area, help your neighbors and create new green spaces. Give gratitude for the trees in your life and know that while ever-changing, tree life will go on. 

You may not know this but TreeUtah is coming up on it's second busy season of planting, we plant not only in the typical beautiful spring weather but in the early fall too! Fall is a great time to plant trees. A fall garden is full of delightful sights, there’s nothing like the sweet smell of fall and the chill of cooler temperatures to get out there and get planting. 

Planting in the fall gives trees an extra growing season, as they benefit from the cooler temperatures and rain allowing them to establish deeper roots and prepare for the coming spring breezes. Trees go dormant in the winter, which is like hibernation but for plants. This period slows down the tree’s growth and energy use. Properly planting trees is the first step towards protecting their long-term survival. It’s safe to plant trees until the ground is frozen solid, generally after the first hard frost. Even if there is snow on the ground, if you can place a shovel in the ground you are good to plant your tree. 

Here are five trees that make for colorful fall foliage: Japanese Maple, Berbiris thunbergii, Smoke bush (Cotinus), Dogwood and Hardy plumbago 

Remember planting in the fall allows for a stronger root system and daily care. TreeUtah encourages you to be water aware. It is important to make sure your new trees are getting enough water. Due to differing elevations, microclimates, and tree species, be sure your trees have the water they need.

If you plant now you will find you have less aftercare into the next season. The first 2 years of a tree’s life is critical for survival. The tree is establishing its root system in the soil and is sensitive to stressors like heat and drought. Water a newly planted tree immediately after planting and routinely check the soil moisture often to be sure the tree has enough water for the next 2 growing seasons. After the tree is established, it will have an easier time adjusting to heat and drought conditions.

TreeUtah Tree Care Guide

Many know Pete Seeger, the singer, folk-song collector and songwriter who spearheaded an American folk revival and spent a long career championing folk music as both a vital heritage and a catalyst for social change. What may be lesser known is that Seeger wrote a special song titled "I Am The Tree You Planted" for TreeUtah, here it is, as told by TreeUtah founder Pepper Provenzano:

During the '80s and the '90s, I was a journalist living in Salt Lake City and concurrently, I had started a non-profit organization that taught tree planting and tree stewardship, tree aftercare, in urbanized areas. So I ended up working all around the state. It was called TreeUtah. At the same time, our daughter was dancing with a University of Utah affiliated organization for children, and Pete Seeger was coming to town. I knew in advance that Pete Seeger was coming to Salt Lake City in the spring of 1994 to sing with a performance of the Children's Dance Theatre at the University of Utah. I wrote, requesting that he would write a song for the purpose of tree planting. A couple of months later, when he came to town, I received a phone call saying, "Could you go and pick up Pete? He’s staying up at the Alta Lodge," and I was so excited, you know, I went up first thing in the morning. Pete came to the door and said, "Oh, Pepper, nice to meet you, I've got something for you." And he said, "I read your letter, and last night, 3:00 or 4:00 in the morning,” evidently he was moved sufficiently to... to wake up and write this song. I attach the letter I wrote, hoping to inspire him to write a song for that 25th anniversary of Earth Day, and the three-page song, I Am the Tree You Plant. 25 years later, just before the 50th Earth Day anniversary, I brought the song to Antique Roadshow and they featured it. 

Pepper heard it has been subsequently, played as far away as China. Over the years, Pete Seeger used his voice for world peace and environmental conservation. And he always encouraged us all to sing along. For reminding us where we come from and showing us where we need to go, we will always be grateful to Pete Seeger and his contribution to planting trees and building community. 

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/roadshow/season/20/tucson-az/appraisals/1994-pete-seeger-original-song-manuscript--201501A22/

Many of us are walking outdoors more than ever in the time of Covid-19, we are exploring our neighborhoods with greater interest and as we are walking we notice our surroundings more too. Have you been curious to know what trees are planted in your area? It turns out there is a resource for that, an online app to better help you understand and identify the urban forests which surround you.

If you are interested in tree identification in Salt Lake City you can visit an interactive online map here! The Salt Lake City Urban Forestry Program provides most services related to the maintenance of city trees. 

Salt Lake City urban forest consists of about 85,000 public trees including 63,000 street trees and 22,000 additional trees growing in parks and open spaces. These trees provide social, economic, aesthetic, and environmental benefits to the city. Salt Lake City Urban Forestry is responsible for the care and maintenance of the vibrant urban forest.

To find out more about a specific tree, click a dot on the map and bring urban forests to your fingertips.

Trees growing in the park strip between the sidewalk and the street are City trees, as well as all trees growing in parks. Some streets do not have park strips, but the trees along the street are still city trees. Call the Urban Forestry office with the address of the tree and we can determine if it is a City tree.

Enjoy tree identification and get exploring today!

It’s a beautiful sunny day and you are standing in an EcoGarden, a permaculture demonstration space, situated on the grounds of the Day-Riverside Library, in the Rose Park neighborhood of Salt Lake City. It fills the space between the library itself and the Jordan River, providing an inviting link between the building and the riverside trails that connect with the surrounding community. As you are surrounded by the plants and trees it is obvious this is a special community space but how did it all start and what does it mean for a community?

This ever-evolving EcoGarden was first laid out in 2005, under the direction of renowned permaculture expert and author, the late Toby Hemenway and former TreeUtah director Vaughn Lovejoy. Since then it has been sustained by dedicated volunteers, neighbors and TreeUtah staff. The land the garden sits on was originally intended as an overflow retention basin for the Jordan River. When TreeUtah decided to do an EcoGarden, they considered putting it at Bend in the River Park along the Provo-Jordan River Parkway Trail. However, the land was too toxic with mercury and lead to grow anything edible. The plot by the Day-Riverside library seemed to be the perfect solution.

The guiding principle of permaculture is to cultivate food, medicine, and other useful plants in harmony with and in imitation of the surrounding ecosystem. Traditional farming techniques prioritize annual plants and require a continual input of nutrients, pesticides, and new plants, permaculture relies on a thoughtful mix perennials to create a more closed self-regulating and sustainable system.

The garden is designed around fourteen guilds or smaller plant communities. These are each centered around a fruit or nut tree. Each tree is planted with a specific mix of shrubs, flowers, grasses, herbs, and native plants that complement one another through their unique characteristics. Some plants might fix nitrogen in the soil, making it available to the surrounding plants. While others perhaps attract pollinators that will benefit the entire group. A third species may discourage pests or invasive plants with the scent of its flowers or the oils in its leaves.

Additionally, the guilds are designed to maximize water retention, by slowing evaporation and runoff called Swales. Swales are ditches dug along the contour of the land, so as water runs downward, it is caught on the formation, and moisture is more effectively contained. Many of the plants are also drought-resistant, meaning the garden can survive (and even thrive) with minimal watering and even go long periods without any surface water at all. The irrigation that is in place is a drip system that delivers water directly to the plants root systems.

Finally, and most importantly, the EcoGarden is a community gathering space. The area is not fenced off from the neighborhood. Rather it is an inviting space, with benches, picnic tables, and a shade structure grown over with grapevines. We encourage residents of the neighborhood to utilize the space for gatherings, quiet contemplation, and of course as a source of food.

The library brings children into the garden for storytime. Nearby elementary schools bring students for outdoor lunches. Garden maintenance and upkeep is done by volunteers. TreeUtah holds regular workshops on topics ranging from tree pruning, to mason bees, to uses of medicinal herbs. A healthy ecosystem necessarily includes the people who live in it, join us in our work in creating sustainable communities. Contact volunteer@treeutah.org

If you spent time near a stream or river it's likely you've seen a Boxelder Maple tree but they can also be found in urban areas, lining streets and providing shade. Another sure sign you can't miss is seeing those little black and red boxelder bugs, which feed on the tree and which always seem to try to get indoors. While we have plenty of these in Utah, Boxelders are our found throughout the United States. 

Considered by many a "maple outcast", it is indeed in the maple family and the only native maple with more than one single blade or leaflet on a single leaf stalk. These trees help to shelter wildlife and stabilize stream banks. The trees can be crafted into a bonsai and are often used as a screen or windbreak. However, in urban areas, they are considered a type of weed and in fact, they have brittle, weak wood. That means that the trees break easily in wind and ice storms. It's seeds, found in winged samaras, a pale green seed that twirls if thrown up in the air and self-seed easily. These trees are also known as the ash-leaved maple. Although considered a less desirable tree by visual standards, Boxelder can be a huge asset in adverse tree sites. A boxelder in the landscape grows to a height of 25 to 50 feet and lives 75 to 100 years. Its drought tolerance makes the tree a great plant in dry country landscape and very easy on limited water resources. 

Fun historical fact: The lower trunk is fine-grained, used by Native Americans for bowls, dishes, pipestems, and drums. The inner bark was boiled into a tea that was used as an emetic, a medicine that causes vomiting. You can learn more about boxelder maples here and here. 

Utah Society for Environmental Education Executive Director Alex Porpora's letter in the Salt Lake Tribune. We have a talented community of environmental educators in Utah who are ready and willing to support learning this fall. USEE can also help schools develop outdoor classrooms. EE and outdoor education can help provide safe and equitable solutions to school reopening.

Alex Porpora is executive director of the Utah Society for Environmental Education

"School closures and the sudden shift to at-home learning have brought significant challenges for families, teachers and even the employers of parents. We applaud the efforts of Utah’s schools and educators who have worked to ensure that students still receive quality instruction and support.

Even with this work, hours of instructional time have been lost, not all families have access to virtual learning, working parents struggle to balance work and school expectations, schools are not designed to accommodate social distancing and the mental health of students, teachers and parents has been impacted.

Today, more than ever before, education is a team effort. We need the support of schools, families and education partners in order to be successful. Around the country and the world, we are re-visioning what school will look like as we continue to address these challenges. As we are rethinking the school building, instruction and all the social services that rely on reaching students through schools, it is critical that we rethink how we use the outdoors and outdoor and environmental learning providers as critical parts of the solution.

The outdoors is a resource for learning, engagement and health, and it should be available to all. Across all age groups, greater access to the outdoors is associated with reduced stress and greater mental health and well-being.

The risks of transmitting COVID-19 are lower in outdoor spaces than indoor spaces. Parks and open spaces around the state have been operating throughout the pandemic and have developed strong health and safety guidelines.

How can we begin to rethink how we use outdoor spaces on the school grounds for learning? How can we rethink the role of local nature centers, science centers, and other community organizations to provide additional indoor and outdoor space for schools to provide needed space for social distancing? How can schools, districts and families partner with local environmental and outdoor education providers who are experts in using the outdoors for learning to develop innovative education solutions?

Recovery and resilience in the era of COVID-19 is a community-wide effort. Adding the outdoors to our toolkit of solutions for schools and families provides another opportunity to meet the challenges we are all facing.

Environmental and outdoor learning providers are working hard to continue supporting schools, communities, and families with online resources and distance learning, continuing to provide high-quality education and connection to nature through virtual experiences, offering physically distanced programming to small groups of students, teacher professional development, curriculum and so much more.

As caregivers, you can share outdoor solutions with your child’s teachers, you can make connections with your local nature centers and community organizations about the opportunities they have to share.

As teachers, you can share outdoor solutions with your principal and administrators.

As school districts, you can reach out to local community environmental and outdoor learning providers to help co-create innovative solutions for your district.

We can all be essential partners in utilizing the outdoors for the recovery and re-opening of schools. Let’s work together to make sure that students continue to thrive and learn."

Most summers, but especially this 2020 summer, you may have had to alter your travel plans to accommodate Covid19 restrictions. Instead of a flight out of town you might be hitting the road to get out exploring, and to make those long road trips more interesting you might be taking those more scenic routes. Often there are interesting and historic places to visit along the way and as you enter a new city and you may have noticed a green and white plaque which reads "Tree Cities USA" wondering what that means. Turns out, there is quite a bit of work and effort to get that little sign and it means a great deal for our planet. 

The Arbor Day Foundation, Tree City USA program has been building tree canopy in cities and towns across America since 1976. It is a nationwide movement that provides the framework necessary for communities to successfully manage and expand trees in public spaces. But, there are a set of criteria each city has to meet.

To qualify as a Tree City USA community, you must meet four standards established by the Arbor Day Foundation and the National Association of State Foresters. These standards were established to ensure that every community would have a viable tree management program and that no community would be excluded due to size.

• Someone must be legally responsible for the care of all trees on city- or town-owned property. Often, both professional staff and an advisory tree board are established, which is a good goal.
• A public tree care ordinance forms the foundation of a city’s tree care program. It provides an opportunity to set good policy and back it with the force of law when necessary.
• Providing support at or above $2 per capita, a community demonstrates its commitment to grow and tend these valuable public assets. 
• An effective program for community trees would not be complete without an annual Arbor Day ceremony. Citizens join together to celebrate the benefits of community trees and the work accomplished to plant and maintain them.

As you can see it take some great planning and commitment to obtain this special recognition. A group of dedicated planners and tree lovers took time to make trees a priority in their city for all to enjoy!

Here in Utah over 50 cities have established themselves as Tree Cities. Springville and Murray have been registered for 40 years! Brigham City, Provo and Salt Lake City for over 30 years. Even Hill Air Force Base has a designation nearing 30 years. You can find a complete list by state here: https://www.arborday.org/programs/treecityusa/treecities.cfm?chosenstate=Utah

The benefits of a larger tree canopy for cities is undeniable, studies show:

Trees yield 3–5 times their cost in overall benefits to the city.

As few as three additional trees planted around each building in the United States saves $2 billion every year in energy costs.

Properly placed trees often increase property values from 7–20%. 

Trees and green spaces directly correlate to greater connections to neighbors, happier, healthier and safer areas us now and into future generations.

Next time you hit the road challenge yourself and your passengers to spot those "Tree City USA" signs and take a moment to reflect on the trees in the area, knowing someone took some time to make sure trees will be protected for everyone to enjoy and make your road trips all that more enjoyable when you get out to stretch those legs and breathe in some cool air in the shade or picnic.

Tree City USA is an Arbor Day Foundation program in cooperation with these great tree protectors:

https://www.arborday.org/programs/treecityusa/about.cfm

https://www.fs.usda.gov/

https://www.fs.usda.gov/managing-land/urban-forests/ucf

https://www.stateforesters.org/

When you are out in a forest or wooded area you may notice and appreciate the abundant life a tree may give to other living things all around it. You see various creatures collecting and harvesting useful bits that will sustain it through the seasons. But, what might not be as obvious is that you, the passing human in this woodland can also find sustenance from a tree! Aside from obvious tasty fruits, sap and nuts a tree can produce, there are some less obvious edible food sources that can be found in the bark, twigs, roots and leaves. Ecology instructor and author, Jesse Vernon Trail, has written on what to look for in forest foraging, let's explore those together. 

A pine tree can provide valuable nutrition, like vitamin C, in its inner bark and a birch tree produces edible syrup, a tasty inner bark as well as young twigs for human consumption. Let's explore a few more trees that you can eat! The American Beech brings to mind a great towering shade tree, the small nuts can be eaten and the leaves in Spring can be cooked. Several trees such as the Beech and Birch, have an inner bark that can be eaten, the best method for inner bark is often a method of drying the grinding it down into a flour for baking. While it possible to create bark flour it is still a "survival food" meaning it takes great effort and offers limited yield, however, it is exciting to think that there is food around us if we need it. In fact native people and pioneers used these methods to survive. Outer Birch bark can also be eaten raw or cooked and added to many dishes either way, its sap is also usable.

If you come across a Linden tree in bloom you might use the flowers to make a tea and the young leaves can be eaten raw or cooked as a green dish. Poplar trees and Quaking Aspens can provide edible inner bark raw or cooked and ground into flour for baking. In the mood for spaghetti? Try the long inner bark strips of a Willow tree, it may not taste as good as your usual pasta plate but it will keep you alive! 

Be safe when recreating and exploring nature, take time to learn and identify what surrounds you, there is always more than meets the eye. Consider taking a nature course in edible trees and plants. You can learn more about all sorts of edible trees here too! 

What North American Ash has the power to thrive in high elevations, dry and rocky canyons and has simple, not compound, leaf? If you've been out exploring in the Utah wild you've seen these super Ash trees called the Singleleaf Ash! 

Singleleaf Ash is native to the southwestern United States, where it grows in a number of habitats. It is unusual in the genus in that some (though not all) specimens have simple leaves instead of the pinnate compound leaves more characteristic of the group. be sure to take a closer look. This may be an adaptation for survival in the hot, arid environments in which the single-leaf ash lives: unsplit leaves reduce the surface area through which water is lost by a process called transpiration. It is also sometime called a dwarf or shrub ash. The leaves are almost always whole, not split into divisions. Each set of arrows in the second photograph at left points to the rarely occurring tri-foliate leaves, i.e., each leaf is divided into three leaflets. 

It's name history is interesting too. Linnaeus named this genus in 1753: "Fraxinus" is the ancient Latin name given to Ash trees. Fraxinus anomala was collected by Newberry and Palmer independently in Utah in the late 1850s and was named by John Torrey in 1871.

If you are interested in planting this ash you can learn more online. Prune regularly to promote health, provide air circulation, maintain a desirable shape, and to remove dead or damaged branches. Pruning is best done in late-winter to early spring for most trees and late-spring for spring blooming trees. Choose species that are resistant to pest damage. Monitor the tree for pests, diseases or other ailments on a regular basis. Protect the trunk especially where maintenance activities, such as mowing, may cause damage. Newly planted trees in areas with high exposure should have the trunk protected during the winter. Although  Fraxinus anomala most often grows with a vertical posture, it is common to find it sprawling in an intricate shrub pattern. Fall colors are a bright golden yellow.

You may be surprised to learn that Utah is home to only two true native firs, Subalpine and White Firs. Subalpine fir is native in high elevations and likes cool, moist sites. The blue green needles have distinct balsam scent. Try rubbing the needles between your fingers and take that fragrant scent in! Look for narrow cones, crowns in dark purple. This species is under threat from a tiny insect that is killing them off in a short period in as little as two years. Research is being done on this on why and how to protect firs.

White firs are sometimes confused with Blue Spruce due to the blue-green color and is also known as Concolor Fir (all one color). White fir live up to 300 years. These trees are also popular Christmas Trees and can be found in many mountain ranges including California, Oregon, Wyoming and of course Utah. White fir have a special trait to maintain lower limbs which are good for climbing and make a good escape route for all sorts of wildlife.

Spruce-fir is the fourth most common coniferous forest type in Utah. The majority of spruce found in Utah is Engelmann spruce and Blue spruce, valued as good timber.

The next time you are out Utah's canyons take some time observe the trees around you. Are they native? What role or function does the tree play? Do the trees look healthy and natural? What animals might use the tree and how? How many varieties are there?

The more we stop to look around, learn about and become aware of our surrounding nature the more we can do to protect what we see and teach others to do the same.

• Care of the Earth: Provision for all life systems to continue and multiply.
• Care of people: Provision for people to access those resources necessary for their existence
• Return of surplus: to those two goals. If there is extra of something, use it either to help people or help the Earth. Never waste it. 

Let's assume we all care for the earth and want a more sustainable world. Recently we all saw the positive side effects on the environment due to the limitations the Covid19 virus set upon society. Less pollution and energy consumption was a strange and positive test we were all thrown into which let us see how our actions affect our environment.

With that in mind, we are then curious to explore other areas that might create long lasting and positive affects. Premaculture may not at first seem an obvious area of interest to organizations like TreeUtah, who strives to build a thriving urban tree canopy. Wouldn't any old leafy tree do? Yet, when we delve deeper into this area we start to notice that we can always take things further and not only reduce heat island effects but also create usable food sources for a fully integrated community plan. 

Could the answer be in planting "Forest Gardens?" We know the foundations of permaculture but what is a forest garden?

One of the best explanations are found here, "A forest garden is a garden that is designed to mimic the interrelationships that exist in a natural woodland environment. Wild trees, shrubs, groundcover and vines all grow together in a symbiotic fashion that requires no additional fertilizer, water, pest or disease control other than what the plants provide for themselves. In Permaculture these small groups are called guilds, and when you put many guilds together you in turn get a forest garden.

Picture the tallest trees planted to the north, then moving south, smaller trees with vines growing on them, then herbs and finally some ground cover. Since the tallest trees are to the north, all elements of the garden are stepped down in size to receive adequate sunlight from the southern sun." https://www.growforagecookferment.com/permaculture-forest-garden/

So, from here we see there are ways to take tree planting further. We can plan better ways forward to make the most beneficial use of our lands and how we can maximize the benefits for communities. Let us commit to planting trees in ways that invite us to engage in and to feel and taste the place we live in.

Can you think of a place that brings back memories of green space and local food? Maybe a walk along a path where you picked a sun sweetened stone fruit. When we plant with intention, we create a more diverse and engaging landscape. We see not only plants thriving but humans too.

There are many resources for learning more about permaculture. If you are interested in how to support more forest gardens in your area contact TreeUtah or visit

https://permaculture.usu.edu/index

For many Utahns, one of the most challenging realities of the COVID-19 lockdown is balancing the demands of keeping their family safe at home, while also keeping their kids occupied with meaningful and engaging activities.

Many previous events for family fun have been modified or canceled, but some exciting opportunities are available that follow the protocols of social distancing.

On May 2,  Friends of Fairmont planted 10 trees in Fairmont Park with the help of the nonprofit Tree Utah and some Sugar House families.

“The idea for doing the trees came pre-COVID. We had said ‘OK, when it gets warmer, we’re going to do a planting,’” said Sarah Woolsey[LL1] , the leader of Friends of Fairmont.  

“And then Amy May, the executive director of Tree Utah, she and I talked and we said, ‘Well, we have these trees, they’re waiting to be planted, could we find a way to work with the parks and the county and the city to have it be OK to do a planting?’”

The group was able to drive a larger turnout than normal, and a total of eight families participated in the kid-friendly event.

Each family stuck to their own tree, planting it in a plot of soil that had already been dug and moistened by the city. Additionally, there were guidelines in place to ensure sanitation; families were encouraged to wear masks and were required to bring water and their own tools.

As a new resident of Utah, Emily Parker was impressed with the opportunity that the tree planting event gave her family to be active and teach them about nature despite the impacts of the virus.

“It was super friendly and personable. It was weird, yes, because it was the first time going out and interacting with people after being inside for three weeks. It was very welcoming; they dug the hole for us,” Parker said.

“For my crew it was nice, like my dog came along and we got to walk there, and my little family we got to interact, and it was fun. Even some girls came over and helped with dirt and stuff. I don’t think that it felt awkward in any way. It was just really friendly and calm,” Parker said.

“They even suggested, like you should give it a name. It made us feel really special. It made the experience for the children to be like this is a wonderful thing that you’re putting something alive into our earth to create this beauty,” Parker said.

Woolsey believes that many traditional opportunities to serve can be modified in ways that still allow for mission-based organizations to accomplish their goals during the pandemic.

“The tree planting event is an example of adapting to the rules of COVID-19,” Woolsey said.

“A park or an outdoor volunteer opportunity is a really great way to get involved, and to do something for the community that it’s easy to social distance, so you know, volunteering in a park setting is going to be outside and likely tend to be safe,” Woolsey said.

“Really anything can be adapted and that we just have to be creative, and we have to work together to find a solution. We’ve really never had little kids at our events, but this is perfect to bring a family together to plant a tree and they thought it was really fun and we got the kids involved,” Woolsey explained.

Parker said it was a safe environment to bring his kids. “They were really smart to put it in waves and stagger the entrance which kept it feeling like a small event, so I think there was like two to three times to pick that you could show up at,” he said.

Between the past couple of weeks of April and the beginning of May, Friends of Fairmont has planted 22 trees in Fairmont Park that are now being taken care of by the park staff. If you want to get involved in the community during COVID-19 and are looking for safe opportunities for your family to serve the community while social distancing, contact Sarah Woolsey at hollywoodaverocks@gmail.com or follow Friends of Fairmont Salt Lake City on Facebook.

https://www.mysugarhousejournal.com/2020/06/11/317973/planting-trees-la-social-distancing-style

We work closely with our municipal partners and we can only plant trees that are on approved areas for tree planting. One of the goals of our program, and the partners we work with, is to increase the urban canopy in order to maximize the benefits and create tree equity in areas which need more shade. In other words, the larger the tree, the more the urban canopy grows, which provides more benefits in terms of cooling in the heat of summer, providing oxygen, and cleaning our air and water. So when a planting site allows it we need to optimize the size of the tree planted to ensure survival. We also want to make sure we aren’t planting trees that are too big, in order to protect existing urban infrastructure.

Fruit trees are planted in certain spaces, such as yards or garden areas that are six feet or larger and have overhead primary power lines. You can visit some of those types of trees in the EcoGarden!

When looking to plant native trees we will always make sure to plant the right tree in the right place. Native trees are often preferred, but many tend to get pretty big and just won’t work in some planting locations due to overhead power lines, if the strip isn’t wide enough, a nearby intersection. We plant as diversely as possible toward a sustainable urban forest.

If you are considering removing or planting a new tree,  you can check with the city to see if there are laws affecting your tree. We can’t help you with a tree removal and to remove a street tree, you need a permit. Contact your city’s urban forestry department directly for a removal inspection. If you want to consult with us for replanting a new tree just contact our office and we can help in your selection process.  All street tree locations are based on a city inspection, and there are many factors involved, including distance from underground utilities, overhead lights and power lines, utility poles, fire hydrants, intersections, and street signs. Planting in the spot chosen by the inspector will help ensure your street tree has the best shot at long term survival.

Proper watering for the first three years after planting encourages tree roots to grow deeper in the soil, we recommend at least 15 gallons a week during the summer for the tree’s first three years, and as needed in the future when temperatures are extreme. We do our best to keep an eye on all trees planted to make sure they are healthy for generations to come.

We hope you find as much joy and the benefits from planting trees as TreeUtah does! Research more on planting on your own or join us at one of our public events and learn in action, see you soon!

On this 2020 Juneteenth we are keenly aware that voice of black lives has not be heard or present enough in society. We'd like to share this excerpt from taken from https://heated.world/p/the-climate-movements-silence (Emily Atkin) Take time to read these words and reflect on how environmentalism has been and how it could be going forward.

"It simply does not make sense for anyone in the environmental or climate movement to stay silent on systemic racism, said Havstad. “The burden of the issues that you’re working on are falling harder on all people color, and particularly Black people,” she said. “Unless you’re willing to solve the roots of that disproportionate impact, you’re not solving anything at all.”

The environmental movement’s unwillingness to strongly advocate for racial justice is also likely a big reason why Black people are severely underrepresented in mainstream environmental groups; are less likely to identify as “environmentalists;” and less likely to participate in outdoor recreation, despite consistently reporting higher concern for the environment and the climate than white people. It’s not that they don’t care about solving a crisis that disproportionate affects them. It’s that they’re being pushed away from the biggest conversations with the loudest voices.

“Anti-blackness is rampant in the climate and environmental movement,” Havstad said. “It’s our responsibility to align our climate and environmental work with the movement for black lives.”

“THE STATEMENTS OF SOLIDARITY ARE GOOD, BUT THEY’RE NOT ENOUGH,” said Havstad"

TreeUtah supports diversity and inclusive communities, we believe in tree equity for all! 

Ian Peisner, front, planting coordinator for TreeUtah, helps volunteer Preston Willey move a plane tree into place at Stratford Park in Salt Lake City on Thursday. TreeUtah organized volunteers to help plant the trees, just the latest of more than 385,000 trees the nonprofit has planted around Utah. The nonprofit organization works with government agencies, local businesses, church groups and community volunteers to plant trees in public spaces throughout the state. It plants trees of all types and aims to plant 7,000 new trees to make our communities healthier.

https://www.deseret.com/utah/2020/6/4/21280442/can-you-dig-it-treeutah-volunteers-plant-trees-in-s-l-s-stratford-park

We hope to open up plantings to the public soon! We're currently conducting social distancing plantings with our Team Leaders and trained volunteers in order to learn how to safely plant trees with small groups in the safest possible way. It's been going well and we are hopeful that there will be opportunities for your household to get involved soon. Things will look a bit different than in past years, with volunteers bringing all of their own tools, gloves, snacks - but we supply the trees and lots of instruction and support along the way. 

Visit our volunteer page to find out more ways to get involved!

Monday, May 11, 2020, 5:00pm – 6:00pm MST

Join TreeUtah and other grantees for the Park City Community Foundation discussion with recipients of the Park City Climate Fund to learn about the ongoing work in greater Park City and discuss changes we can all make to reduce carbon emissions and contribute to the sustainability of our community.

Co-hosted with Park City Library, and featuring TreeUtah, Utah Clean Energy, Recycle Utah, and Park City High School Earth Club.

Please join us for this virtual webinar and get ready to take action!

Register/Join!

Each nonprofit will receive a $10,000 donation to be allocated for the purchase and planting of trees. "We're thrilled to make this donation to two important earth conservation nonprofits," said Jared Turner, president and COO at Young Living. "Even though our Earth Day observance has had to pivot this year due to social distancing, we're still committed to showing our gratitude to nature and to our employees by donating trees in their honor and making the earth a priority, no matter the circumstances." 

Young Living is partnering with the Arbor Day Foundation to restore wildlife habitat by planting more than 5,000 trees in Fishlake National Forest on behalf of each Young Living team member. The Arbor Day Foundation has planted more than 350 million trees in neighborhoods, communities, cities and forests throughout the world to ensure a greener and healthier future for everyone. The organization's vision is to help others understand and use trees as a solution to many global issues, including air quality, water quality, a changing climate, deforestation, poverty and hunger. In addition to its donation to the Arbor Day Foundation, Young Living is investing in local tree planting efforts by donating $10,000 to TreeUtah. This sponsorship will enable TreeUtah to continue the legacy of adding trees to parks that provide beauty, cooling shade and cleaner air to community spaces. TreeUtah works with government agencies, local businesses, church groups and others to plant trees of all types and sizes around the state. Every year, the organization aims to plant 7,000 new trees to make Utah's communities greener and healthier.

https://www.beautypackaging.com/contents/view_breaking-news/2020-04-22/young-living-donates-to-arbor-day-foundation-and-treeutah/

Most of us don’t think of trees as infrastructure, but in an urban context, they are just that. Research indicates that they can play a powerful role in traffic calming, especially through their impact on three vehicle-related risks: speeding, road rage, and pedestrian/bicyclist injury. Streets with landscaped center medians or perimeter street trees may affect driver perception of lane width, causing something called the “edge effect.” This “edge effect” provides them with a psychological prompt to go slower. Further findings show that simply viewing nature in urban settings has a strongly restorative and calming effect. 

Putting safety first and creating a safe environment for pedestrians and bicyclists who share the road with vehicles is also an important consideration in road design.  A 2010 report from the School of Forest Resources at the University of Washington showed that drivers seeing natural roadside views exhibited lower levels of stress and frustration compared to those viewing all-built settings.

In an informal poll on TreeUtah’s Facebook Group page, respondents overwhelmingly selected that trees did make a difference in keeping them calm in traffic as opposed to the notion that trees did not affect mood and driving. Providing green routes also addresses some negative influences of commuting on health by reducing stress and frustration in congested or slow-moving traffic. Simply having green space for the eye and mind to focus on allows us time to engage with our environment in a meaningful way.

The next time you are out on the road, notice how you feel on street lined with trees and those without trees. What do you prefer and how can you support the effort in urban forestry? One positive action might just be joining a TreeUtah event! 

Planting urban trees begins with careful planning and consideration. A little forethought and a simple layout plan can produce a landscape that will cool your home in summer and keep out the winter winds. Your yard should contain trees that grow well in the soil and moisture of your area. Trees need to be properly placed to avoid collisions with power lines and buildings, and the aesthetics will increase your property value. Before planting, always call “811” before you dig to schedule professionals to locate utilities or lines underground. It's a free service, and it saves lives.

A good landscaping plan looks at these areas:

• Height. Will the tree bump into anything when it is fully grown?
• Canopy spread. How wide will the tree grow? Is the tree deciduous or evergreen? (Will it lose its leaves in the winter?)
• Form or shape. A columnar tree will grow in less space. Round and V-Shaped species provide the most shade.
• Growth rate. How long will it take for your tree to reach its full height? Slow-growing species typically live longer than fast-growing species.
• Soil, sun, and moisture requirements.
• Fruit. No one wants messy droppings on busy sidewalks, so you’ll need to put them in low-traffic areas and make a plan to harvest properly.
• Hardiness. Check out TreeUtah's list of recommended trees for Utah to make sure the tree you get is appropriate for your elevation.

More info can be found here.

If damage is relatively slight, prune any broken branches, repair torn bark or rough edges around wounds, and let the tree begin the process of wound repair.

Although the tree has been damaged, enough strong limbs may remain on a basically healthy tree to make saving it possible. A mature shade tree can usually survive the loss of one major limb. The broken branch should be pruned back to the trunk. Young trees recover quickly. If the leader and structure for branching is intact, remove the broken branches so the tree can recover.

If a tree appears to be a borderline case, don’t simply cut it down. It’s best to give the tree some time. A final decision can be made later. Some trees simply can’t be saved or are not worth saving. If the tree has already been weakened by disease, if the trunk is split, or more than 50 percent of the crown is gone, the tree has lost its survival edge.

A helpful visual guide

A few years later I was approached by the head of Community Affairs at American Express where I worked. They wanted me to join a nonprofit board and TreeUtah was one of the organizations on the list. I agreed to join and have through the years been Treasurer and Board Chair. I also continued to volunteer at plantings with my family. My kids were also involved. In addition to participating in plantings, they also assisted at fundraisers. At one such event, my son was the emcee and my daughter dressed up as a tree and raised money by having people ‘hug a tree’.

When I completed my term on the board, I continued to volunteer with and donate to TreeUtah. I was asked to rejoin the board in 2014 and have been pleased to see how the organization has changed and evolved, with new volunteers and corporate donors, as well as quite a few long time participants.

I enjoy being part of plantings. “Extreme Tree Planting” to protect high altitude cliffs at the ski resorts and restoration plantings are especially rewarding. On the other hand, large caliper park plantings in park settings offer immediate gratification.

I encourage others to join the TreeUtah community at a planting and also become a financial supporter of TreeUtah. 

The Park City Climate Fund was established by Park City Community Foundation in October 2019 to provide seed capital to innovative projects that help address climate change. The fund engages people and entities in greater Park City to implement local climate solutions that are proven to have a great impact on greenhouse gas emissions and/or carbon sequestration, and have the potential to be effective in other mountain communities.

The first call for grant proposals to the Park City Climate Fund was announced at the Mountain Towns 2030 Net Zero Summit in October 2019 by Park City Community Foundation. 36 applications for grants were received with eight semifinalists selected to present to the grants committee, resulting in four funded projects—including one funded by the KTC Fund.

About Park City Community Foundation: Park City Community Foundation plays a vital role in solving the most challenging problems in Park City. They care for and invest in people, place, and culture by bringing together local nonprofits, donors, and community leaders to contribute financial resources and innovative ideas to benefit all the people of Park City.

Read more from the Park Record and learn more at parkcitycf.org. 

TreeUtah had the pleasure of helping the Modern Gardener at PBS come up with this handy guide to taking care of Utah trees.

Take a look!

"SALT LAKE CITY — Two hundred trees don’t look like many, standing in a fenced enclosure, the majesty of the Wasatch Mountains behind them.

Not many, that is, unless you’re among the city’s urban forestry staff who unloaded them, wrestling a seemingly endless supply of 20-gallon containers from the semi-truck that carried them from the Oregon nursery that raised them."

Read their full story.

Evergreen trees provide numerous benefits when strategically planted around your home. Much like trees and their leaves provide shade and relief from the blazing summer sun, evergreen trees protect from harsh winter winds. They can also offer some sound proofing (up to 40%) and can act as an air pollution barrier, depending on the location and conditions.

Early fall is an excellent time to plant evergreen conifers, allowing a minimum of 6 or 8 weeks before the soil starts to freeze.

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Mulch is a newly planted tree’s best friend because it:

• Insulates the soil, helping to provide a buffer from heat and cold.
• Retains water to help the roots stay moist.Keeps weeds out to avoid root competition.
• Prevents soil compaction.Reduces lawn mower damage.

Steps to Adding Mulch Around Your Tree

1. Remove any grass within a 3-foot area (up to 10 feet for larger tree).
2. Pour natural mulch such as wood chips or bark pieces 2 to 4 inches deep within the circle.
3. Keep the mulch from touching the trunk of the tree.

Here is a list of local hikes to enjoy this summertime. Go outside, take in the natural scenery, and don’t forget to wear sunscreen!

• The Living Room 
  • A 2.5 mile hike with 900 ft of elevation gain to rock shaped furniture. This hike is public transport accessible.
• Ensign Peak Hike
  • A 0.8 mile round trip, this quick short hike has a great view of the Salt Lake valley. 
• Avenue Twin Peaks 
  • A 3.6 mile hike, this hike is great for a stroll or avid trail runners. It ends with a beautiful view of the valley. 
• Donut Falls Trail
  • A 3 mile hike to the edge of a waterfall. This hike is especially fun during the summer because it includes some river crossing.
• Bonneville Shoreline Trail
  • This trail can be as long or short as you’d like. It runs parallel to the entire Wasatch front. It is great for views of the mountains and the city. 
• Lake Blanche Trail
  • This is a difficult, 6.9 mile there-and-back hike. With 2,700 ft of elevation gain, this hike is no easy feat; however, the views and waterfall at the end make it worth the trip.
• Adams Canyon Trail
  • This is hike is a 3.4 mile out-and-back to a scenic waterfall. 
• Mount Olympus Trail 
  • This 6.3 mile hike leads to a great view. It is amazing how quickly you can escape from the confines of the city. 
• RattleSnake Gulch Trail
  • This moderate 3.3 mile trail is great in the summertime as it leads straight through wildflower patches. 
• Lake Mary Trail
  • This 2.6 mile trail is moderate and a great way to experience the alpine ecosystem.

From Zahra Saifee, TU Intern

Although Utah is a desert, many trees found here are native to the land. Native trees are always the best option when considering what to plant because those trees are suited specifically for Utah’s climate. Some of the most common native trees around the Wasatch Front include:

• Big Tooth Maple
  • This tree is what gives the Wasatch Mountains the beautiful fall colors come October. Can withstand a variety of climates up in the mountains and also down in the valley.
•  Box Elder
  • This tree is extremely common because it can withstand all types of temperatures, and also grows relatively fast. Box Elders can grow up to 50 ft, and provide shelter for insects and birds. 
• Rocky Mountain Juniper 
  • This Coniferous tree can be found all over the Wasatch Front due to its drought resistance. This tree also can be used for visual screening, shade, and noise dampening.
• Aspen
  • Probably the most recognizable tree here in Utah. This tree often has “eyes” on its white bark  that watch over the forest! An aspen forest is considered one organism because all of the roots of each aspen tree connect to one “mother tree”. These trees, however, are not a long lived species.  
• Blue Spruce
  • The State tree of Utah. Due to its waxy coating of the needles, in certain angles the tree looks blue variations of color. At full maturity in the wild, the tree can grow up to 135 ft and 30 ft wide!

From Eshan Narasipura, TU intern  

As summer kicks off, take advantage of the pleasant weather in the Salt Lake valley. One of the best ways to enjoy nature and relax is to take a trip to the local parks. Whether you have half a day or an hour in between work, it is nice to decompress. Here is a list of some local parks!

• Liberty Park
  • A local favorite with plenty of shady trees. It has ponds, playgrounds and is home to the Tracy Aviary. On Friday nights, the park hosts a farmer’s market from 4 pm until dusk. 
• International Peace Gardens
  • A beautiful botanical garden, the International Peace Gardens is a seamless medley of plants, architecture, and culture. 
• Sugarhouse Park
  • Runners and walkers galore, this park is perfect for getting a workout it. It also has plenty of trees to rest under and small creek for cooling off.
• Memory Grove Park
  • Tucked away in the hills by the capitol, is park is the place for a quiet getaway. It also serves a memorial for veterans. 
• Pioneer Park
  • Close to downtown, this park has it all; playgrounds, grassy areas, shady spaces, and a great walking path. On Saturday mornings, the park hosts a farmer’s market from 8am-2pm.
• Gilgal Sculpture Garden
  • Hidden in between concrete buildings, the Gilgal Sculpture Garden is filled with sculptures and inscribed stones. You’ll always find something new to look at!
• Bend in the River
  • This park is perfect for bikers, it connects to the Jordan River Parkway trail.
• Constitution Park
  • Tennis courts, soccer fields, and playgrounds, this park is perfect for outdoor activity.

From Zahra Saifee, TU Intern

A study, published in Environment and Behavior, was based on self-reported questionnaires, an earlier 2016 study, published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, measured reduced physiological markers of stress in subjects simply looking at images of nature.

These findings suggest that viewing tree canopy in communities can significantly aid stress recovery and that every tree matters.

In an increasingly stressful world we need more trees and closeness to nature in our lives. Nature encourages social connection as well and exposure to nature has been proven to be key factor in maintaining good physical, social and mental health. The calming effects of the natural environment are particularly beneficial for easing stress, anxiety and symptoms of depression.

“The findings suggest that keeping a few snapshots of greenery around your work desk might not be a bad idea. When participants viewed the natural images in the experiment, their stress levels lowered, thanks to the activation of their parasympathetic nervous system – which controls certain rest functions,” Science Alert reports.

“High levels of parasympathetic activity have been associated with numerous benefits including more adaptive emotion regulation strategies and decreased risk of cardiovascular disease,” the researchers write.

TreeUtah is dedicated to keeping our communities filled with trees to promote healthy minds and living. We encourage everyone to look for ways to support more urban tree growth and to take time each day to connect with nature, especially when stress enters our lives.

Nestled high on an outcropping in Logan Canyon, Old Jardine, stands to watch over the needled forest and meadows below. For over 1500 years, she has reigned. The trail to reach her slowly rises from the canyon floor, winding through grasses dried from the summer and climbing into the cool forest’s shade to reach her down a series of sandy switchbacks. Jardine’s bark is grooved with wind and smoothed by time, only her crown the rich green of a living, breathing juniper. Unknown to us is her wisdom, but it is felt nevertheless.

This Tree Story was contributed by Diantha Williamson. Thank you. Do you have a tree story to share? Send your story to education@treeutah.org. 

You may have a few less shovels and garden tools than TreeUtah has but taking simple, preventive steps now before winter hits can extend the life of your garden tools and when springtime arrives you’ll be able to easily have them ready and working for your projects and spring clean up! 

Use a wire brush or steel wool to remove any dried dirt to prevent the rusting process, If any of your tools already have accumulated rust, you can also use piece of sandpaper to scrape it away. If the tool has a metal blade like a shovel, spade or hoe, sharpen using a whetstone or file after cleaning. 

For tools with wooden handles, you can use wax or natural oil to prevent the wood from splitting during winter temps. Store the tools in a dry spot in the garage, away from any moisture sources. Hand trowels and other small tools can be placed in a bucket of sand soaked in oil to further deter rust, and hang rakes and shovels or prop upright. 

A dead tree might seem useless to thriving forest, however, dead trees play an integral role in keeping that forest healthy and sustainable. A standing dead tree, also called a snag, ironically supports life in many ways. The primary importance of a dead tree is as it gets decomposed by fungi and bacteria, the dead wood gets its nutrients released back into the ground which helps future saplings grow and flourish. Other secondary uses for dead trees that help many aspects of the forest include:

• Dead logs shelter for animals like snakes, squirrels, opossums, and other nesting mammals
• Woodpeckers drill the snags as supply for food and as a nesting site.
  • Woodpeckers test each snag to see which wood is the softest, the softer the wood, the more likely a Woodpecker will be nesting there.
• A dead tree provides birds of prey such as eagles, hawks and owls a perch to get a better view of prey on the ground without being obscured by leaves and branches. 

Dead trees may not have the beauty it once had, but the tree still provides an invaluable contribution to the overall health of a forest. Next time you see a dead tree, keep a lookout for creatures that may be calling it their home.

From Eshan Narasipura, TU Intern

One of TreeUtah’s most wanted information is “What trees to plant?” There are many trees to choose from at local Utah nurseries. But some tree species get planted too often, and some not often enough. TreeUtah regularly researches what tree varieties are ideal for Utah’s urban places and updates this list.

The dominant plant communities found in much of Utah can be roughly correlated with elevation, as follows:

• Subalpine and Alpine: 10,000 feet and higher
• Upper Montane: 9,000-10,000 feet
• Mid-Montane: 6,000-9,000 feet
• Foothill: 4,800-6,000 feet
• Valley: 4,200-4,800 feet

While elevation is a good climate predictor—lower elevations are generally hotter and drier, higher elevations are cooler and moister—other factors play a role in creating microclimates within the elevation zones.

It’s also always good to be aware of the effects of planting non-native and invasive plants to your area. Currently in Utah it is best not to plant White or Subalpine Firs, they are being decimated by an infestation of Balsam Wooly Adelgid (new since 2015).

There are so many good resources here and on the Utah Community Forestry Council and local city sites to help you find just the right trees to plant. We hope you will find what you are looking for and want to hear from you as to what will help you decide! Happy Planting!

I’d love to see a new form of social security … everyone taught how to grow their own; fruit and nut trees planted along every street, parks planted out to edibles, every high rise with a roof garden, every school with at least one fruit tree for every kid enrolled.

– Jackie French

Utah can be a challenging climate for some eager fruit tree gardeners to have success but choosing the right plants can make a huge difference in your local harvest. Most of our Utah climate is perfect for apricots, peaches, apples, cherries, and many other fruits. With a little know how you can enjoy fruit trees in your own yard.

One way to know what plants grow well is to buy locally. Nurseries typically only sell trees that will survive in their local climates.

Fruit trees are more challenging to grow than vegetable plants in Utah, mainly because of their initial special care and the length of time before they begin to produce. Fruit trees require the appropriate balance of water, food, sun and ventilation to grow healthy and build resistance against diseases and pests. Careful clean up of debris around trees and proper pruning will help prevent diseases. Treating them with good care early will help you prevent larger problems later.

The planting area should have at least a half a day of sun and be protected from the wind. The soil should have reasonable drainage. If you have animals, young children, or wild deer nearby, young trees need to be protected with cages, or fences. Deer and other animals love to nibble on the bark and the tender leaves.

If you have a small area for fruit trees, you may want to consider trees that have more than one variety grafted on to the same tree. There are apple trees that grow several types of apples. Some pit trees can grow peaches and apricots. Remember, some varieties need pollination, which may require planting two different varieties of trees. Talking with someone at your local nursery will help you choose the varieties that will best meet your needs.