For seven years, Branch Out Burlington - a group that encourages people to plant new trees and care for them - has welcomed spring by offering bare-root trees for sale to the public at reasonable prices. The trees are grown at the tree nursery at UVM's Horticulture Farm in South Burlington. In addition, an all-volunteer group transplants trees from the nursery to sites along the streets of Burlington. The Tree Keepers, as they're called, plant and care for the trees in order to increase the number of trees in the Queen City and improve our precious green spaces.
We all know the state tree is the Sugar Maple, but at one time, Vermont was home to a number of American Chestnuts, often called the queen of the eastern forest.
In the Appalachian Mountains, one in every four hardwoods was an American Chestnut. Then, in the early 1900s, a devastating blight caused a rapid, widespread die-off of this once plentiful tree from its historic range in the eastern United States - from Maine to Georgia. Within 40 years the nearly four-billion strong American chestnut population was decimated.
It's a majestic tree with palmate leaves like the fingers of a hand coming together at the palm. The wood is very strong and antique Chestnut wood is treasured for its beauty, strength and character. Old barn and house planks are salvaged today for furniture and flooring.
In the 1930s, efforts began to reintroduce them to our woodlands by creating a hybrid between the American chestnut and two Asian resistant species. The Vermont/New Hampshire chapter of the American Chestnut Foundation is now planting restoration seedlings in breeding orchards. Chestnut pollen from Virginia is shipped to Vermont where utility crews do the arduous work of pollinating the trees.
Grace Knight of Perkinsville and a Vermont member of the foundation expects that in 15 to 20 years there will be a substantial number of healthy chestnut trees in the river valleys and warmer areas of the Green Mountains. One Chestnut tree in Woodstock survived the blight and its dense crown now towers high above in the forest canopy. It would be good if this giant of a tree had some company.
One of my favorite poems is "Trees" by Joyce Kilmer. It's one that many of us can recite by heart. Kilmer was an American poet, journalist, literary critic and editor. He enlisted to serve in WWI and was sent to France where he died in 1918 at the age of 31.
His famous poem begins with the lines,
"I think that I shall never see
A poem as lovely as a tree."
And ends with,
"Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree."
Still, it can't hurt for groups like Branch Out Burlington, Tree Keepers and the American Chestnut Foundation to lend a helping hand.
