Western Carolina's Killer Trees
That’s the indigenous
species in the botany world nobody told you about.
I would still wager that trees kill more people in this state each year than bears and cougars have over its lifetime.
Pick any one here. The white pine, for example, reaches heights of over 100 feet. That’s thousands of tons of concentrated furniture just waiting to Geronimo! out of that plane. Without a chute, of course. Hemlock, 80 to 100 feet, its wood is usually used in construction. Oak trees. White oak, red oak, cherrybark oak. Poplars. Elms. Sycamores. Black elms. All trees that can have a circumference wider than your average trash bin.
Gazing through the 21st edition of the pocket manual (actually a PDF file) ‘Common Forest Trees of North Carolina’, I see that most trees have two things in common: much is written about their height and location, and nothing about their life expectancy. Not good. Who’s keeping track? In the deep Western Carolina woods, a tree will just die one day. Sometimes an unlucky lightning bolt will do the trick, on other days parasites have helped uproot it. On most days, we just have to accept that it was the tree’s time. Thank God it goes quietly (we think), all 100-200 feet of it crashing to the forest ground.
The dangers from this known menace are not just limited to dying trees that would like to take somebody out with them. If life were only as simple as a chainsaw and timber. Before the tree chokes, it will be the arms to go first, in this case long, thick branches the length of an automobile. This is what a giant’s Louisville Slugger would look like. There’s that violent crack of wood being severed from wood, the branch hitting the lower tenants on its way down, and finally the whoosh on the forest ground, or the thunk on the sidewalk roof or balcony.
If the fallen branches are not promptly cleared, that’s where they will lie in all eternity, until some animal can use them as roof shingles for their den.
Then comes the fall with the oaks’ target practice. The leaves will need to come down, even though they are taking their sweet time these days—not unusual, with most days still hovering well above room temperature outside. And with the leaves come the acorns. An acorn by itself doesn’t look like much of a weapon. I remember throwing these as a kid when there was no snow around. Acorns can peg you, even give you a little cut, depending on the force it was hurled with.
I would still wager that trees kill more people in this state each year than bears and cougars have over its lifetime.
Pick any one here. The white pine, for example, reaches heights of over 100 feet. That’s thousands of tons of concentrated furniture just waiting to Geronimo! out of that plane. Without a chute, of course. Hemlock, 80 to 100 feet, its wood is usually used in construction. Oak trees. White oak, red oak, cherrybark oak. Poplars. Elms. Sycamores. Black elms. All trees that can have a circumference wider than your average trash bin.
Gazing through the 21st edition of the pocket manual (actually a PDF file) ‘Common Forest Trees of North Carolina’, I see that most trees have two things in common: much is written about their height and location, and nothing about their life expectancy. Not good. Who’s keeping track? In the deep Western Carolina woods, a tree will just die one day. Sometimes an unlucky lightning bolt will do the trick, on other days parasites have helped uproot it. On most days, we just have to accept that it was the tree’s time. Thank God it goes quietly (we think), all 100-200 feet of it crashing to the forest ground.
The dangers from this known menace are not just limited to dying trees that would like to take somebody out with them. If life were only as simple as a chainsaw and timber. Before the tree chokes, it will be the arms to go first, in this case long, thick branches the length of an automobile. This is what a giant’s Louisville Slugger would look like. There’s that violent crack of wood being severed from wood, the branch hitting the lower tenants on its way down, and finally the whoosh on the forest ground, or the thunk on the sidewalk roof or balcony.
If the fallen branches are not promptly cleared, that’s where they will lie in all eternity, until some animal can use them as roof shingles for their den.
Then comes the fall with the oaks’ target practice. The leaves will need to come down, even though they are taking their sweet time these days—not unusual, with most days still hovering well above room temperature outside. And with the leaves come the acorns. An acorn by itself doesn’t look like much of a weapon. I remember throwing these as a kid when there was no snow around. Acorns can peg you, even give you a little cut, depending on the force it was hurled with.
But nothing
compares with suicide oak nuts who take that pre-winterly plunge from over 100
feet up. Plunk. Plunk. On the balcony. On the roof. On the sidewalk. Here, the
oak nut lands on the balcony with a heavy thud, only to bounce up for another three to four feet. The nut, of course, is
neatly cracked down the middle. Now can that same nut bounce off a human head?
Even worse, will there be more than just a nut cracking here? It almost sounds
like a hailstorm, only that the nuts sound like they are landing with a little
more purpose.
All horror stories aside, this is the prettiest the WC landscape will ever be, in orange, yellow, and red. You might just have to enjoy it with a helmet.
All horror stories aside, this is the prettiest the WC landscape will ever be, in orange, yellow, and red. You might just have to enjoy it with a helmet.
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