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| This week we say goodbye to a box elder maple (Acer negundo). We do not know the age of this tree. It was a volunteer, and when it entered the catalogue, an approximate age was not given. |
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| This tree has been tagged for removal since spring 2020, after it suffered significant storm damage. You can read about it and see pictures of the storm damage here. In the above photo, we see a thick, straight trunk and dense foliage up top. It's clearly alive. |
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| Up close and personal, it's truly awful. |
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| Here we see fungal growth, mold, missing bark, and insect damage. |
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| This is extensive, running across half the circumference. |
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| At about four feet up the trunk, the tree had a circumference of 30 inches. |
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| The first step in removal is to take off lower branches. |
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| Then the crown and all the other branches were removed, leaving only the trunk. |
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| The trunk was taken down in one piece. |
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| There was an entire ant civilization living in the caverns of this tree, fifteen feet off the ground. Luckily they could only bite and not sting with venom. |
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| After stump removal, there's not much evidence of this tree's relatively short life. Its memory will be preserved on this blog and our records. |
