Getting Rooted

I said goodbye to the old job on march 19th. About a week later, I popped back in to say hello, pulling a trailer I'd just bought, which already had taillight issues, loaded with tree tubes that I'd had to stop to adjust 3 times on the drive due to 40+ mph winds.

Saying hello to the staff, including the animals, at the nature center made me feel at home. I'd spent ten years there, and this was the first time back since I had fledged the nest. Or, perhaps the better metaphor for the season, since I pulled up my roots to transplant. That's a better tie-in with the tubes, after all.

Most of my month has consisted of planting bareroot seedlings. Thousands of them. One project had me replacing a small pocket in an otherwise delightful machine planting; rows, flat ground, bare soil, no tubes. Good times had by all.

One other has me venturing back to a woods I've worked in the last two winters. High-grading (prior to the existing landowners) had taken out most of the oak and walnut. Then came an ash borer infestation, and the landowners had to watch as the little green menaces wiped out the last abundant, dominant canopy species in the forest.

My supervisor inspecting the project

I came in to do timber stand improvement, to make space so the forest could be replanted with more of its historic cast - oaks, walnut, shagbark - and some new faces, to mix things up. Shellbark hickory, northern pecan, swamp white oak.

"Needs more opportunities for squirrel-chasing." -Paavo expressing his stewardship goals

In a way, the work is simple. Measure the root's length against the shovel's blade. Drive the shovel into the dirt to that depth. Plant the tree, make sure the roots aren't bent, and gently pack the dirt back around it. Maybe adjust to make sure it's coming up straight.

Root flare right at the soil line

Some of the roots make it easier than others. The nursery uses a few different age classes to disseminate their seedlings, so some bags have ~10 year old roots, stout enough to puncture the side of their bag and large enough to require a few widths of the shovel. It's a pain, but you can feel the strength in those roots. I picture the wispy root filaments poking out of the thick lateral like a bunch of hungry mouths, immediately going to work in their soil pushing nutrients out to the equally-hungry leaves, about to burst into the sunlight after a week or so in a cardboard box.

Red oak roots testing the limits of their packaging

Shagbark, conversely, goes in almost too easy. Shrimpy, sparse little hairs along the taproot no larger than a carrot makes me wonder how these little bits of kindling ever turn into the patriarchal, stately giants that become one of the first trees anyone learns to recognize in the forest. More curiously, I wonder why these trees invest such a significant amount of energy into such a large seed, the hickory nut, only to creep out of the forest floor at a glacial pace that mostly fails unless something can keep the competition at bay.

Shagbark getting acquainted with its new surroundings

All of these thoughts and more idly pass through my head with each plunge of the shovel. It's a lot of plunges. But, by and large, the whole process takes less than a minute. Significantly less work than the tube and stake to protect it from deer. Less than a minute, and the tree might grow there for 300 years.

If I did it right, it will be virtually indistinguishable from a tree growing right next to it from seed. If I did it right.

If I didn't, there's no hiding it. The 60 or so seconds I take with each individual tree matters as much as anything that comes before or after. If I leave a root hooked back towards the stem, I could set the tree up to eventually choke itself to death as the root extends and expands into the also-expanding stem.

Maple tree planted with poor technique (not by me!) in Bettendorf, IA

Set the roots too high, and they could dry out, wasting the energy it took the tree to make them and hindering its ability to take up nutrients from the soil in its tender early years. Too deep, and the base becomes prone to rot.

Another maple planted too high, also Bettendorf. Note the rot occurring around the root flare.

The seedling roots, even the big gnarly ones, only take up a few feet of soil at most. At maturity, the roots will occupy an area in the soil roughly equivalent to, or sometimes larger than the canopy. Of course, like that canopy, there will be some mingling with the neighbors.

So I have to introduce them carefully. A 10' walnut will probably double its crown size in 10 years, and if I try to get a sun-loving white oak to grow underneath the pole-sized walnut's head start, the oak will likely bend towards the sunlight. Too much bend and the tree might not reach its full potential.

Spending hours in the woods, slowly filling in downed and decomposing tops with new, young seedlings, it's hard not to see a metaphor.

Here's hoping, as I start this new venture, I don't bend too many roots. Here's hoping I don't have to root-prune too heavily to fit into these new soils. Here's hoping I grow vertically, right from the start, and don't have to spend too much time bending to find my place in the canopy.

Over time, the mingling of the roots, and the canopy's collective effort to slow down winds that could break any one of them alone, will help these seedlings reach greater heights than they could growing solo.

I've already gotten such a kick out of meeting the diverse array of landowners, with their unique perspectives and experiences with their woods. Each piece of property I pass through is another little bit of cross-pollination, a little more diversity to bolster against broader environmental shocks.