Tom Hall lives on a heavily wooded property in Shawneeland, west of Winchester. This spring, he s noticed a lot of spongy moth caterpillars gnawing at the leaves on his oak
Tom Hall lives on a heavily wooded property in Shawneeland, west of Winchester. This spring, he s noticed a lot of spongy moth caterpillars gnawing at the leaves on his oak
Tiny invaders besiege Virginia forests yahoo.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from yahoo.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Tree of heaven is a hellish invasive species. Could a fungus save the day?
The fast-growing tree, native to China, is also a motel for harmful non-native insects, like the spotted lanternfly.
Photograph by Universal Images Group North America LLC / DeAgostini, Alamy
ByTroy Farah
Many trees would be lucky to be as beautiful as
Ailanthus altissima, also known as tree of heaven, a deciduous tree with quill-shaped leaves, light gray bark, and red-and-yellow-tinted seeds that resemble a sunset.
But outside its native China, the plant has also earned the nickname “tree of hell,” due to its highly invasive nature: it can grow three feet a year, cloning itself via underground “suckers,” or through the hundreds of thousands of seeds each tree produces every year.
Several new scientific discoveries give hope that eastern hemlocks will not go the way of chestnut, elm and ash trees and largely disappear from forests in the Chesapeake Bay watershed.
Hemlocks are one of the most prevalent, longest-living, beautiful and ecologically vital trees in Appalachian forests. Sometimes called the redwoods of the East, they can take 250â300 years to mature and live more than 800 years.
They also have a long history with humans. Native Americans used hemlocks for medicines. Settlers used the tips of branches for tea and as a dye for wool and cotton. The mountains of Pennsylvania have ghost towns where leather factories sprung up to receive the tannin from hemlock bark to turn animal skins into leather. The treesâ intense shade cools streams and supports fish habitat. And many homeowners still want hemlocks in their landscaping tableaux.