What is it that make trees fail?

I think in most cases where failures occur, it’s the story of the tree. Maybe not the whole story, but at least the ending. As arborists, in some cases, it’s our job to tell the story. Like biographers. And even sometimes like detectives. Sherlock Holmes.

And doesn’t tragedy and romance and suspense always make for good drama?

Failure in the sense of a physical failure, like large branches of even entire trees, and also biological failure in the sense of succumbing to insect or disease infection. The hero’s tragic flaw.

And the entire time, in the darkness of the forest lurks the ghouls and goblins that are construction damage and drought and urban sprawl devouring up green space. Compaction of the soil, warfare on a microscopic level. As if it were another planet. Biotic. Abiotic. There’s even something there for the SciFi fans. So subatomically present that it’s foreign to most.

I see it in the urban environment as a story of thresholds battered in the trees long line of defense. It’s an epic story altogether, to consider just how tolerant trees are to the urban environment. And how absolutely beautiful they can make it. Like Hip-hop. The hustle of meristematic regions, the flow (or lack their of) of micro and macro nutrients. This struggle is real too.

It’s like the story of Rocky or Rudy or even Sword in the Stone. When you see a tree that has defied all odds, in the face of every adversary. It’s why they’re called champions and kinds. Royalty. Their story is the most adventurous, and the longest and most enjoyable. Like the Old Man and the Sea or Paradise Lost, they are classics.

And so arborists are very much the authors of a tree’s story. We can write, re-write and edit, research and interview, take pictures so that the stories we are telling are the most complete, and the most authentic and the most enjoyable. But it’s important that we do our best all the time to tell the whole entire story. Any good biographer would.

Unfortunately all good stories comes to an end. But their legends never die.