The regal old willow that has graced our front yard for longer than I’ve been alive, and which has sadly shown signs of advancing senescence, is scheduled for termination tomorrow morning. It’s a beautiful old tree, but its habit of dropping a ton of log every spring has made it a hazard, so we’ve decided to end it quickly, rather than a slow death by yearly spontaneous lopping of limbs.
I’ve had several people ask me about this tree, and several have mentioned their sorrow at its imminent passing. If you’d like to pay last respects, tonight is your last chance. Feel free to step into the yard and give it a goodbye hug (be careful, though, and don’t shake it too much—I disavow any responsibility for falling branches.)
The execution of the poor tree will be an all day job on Friday, and unfortunately, it’s got to be carried out in public. For those of you of delicate sensitivities, you might want to stay away from 3rd and College Avenue until Saturday.
Any chance of having a funeral pyre for the old girl?
That’s too bad. I remember that tree, actually. Consider these my “e-respects.”
PZ, if it were mine, I would cut several switches from it and root them in water. Then plant the starts in memory of the mother tree. Salix is one of the easiest trees to start from cuttings.
Don’t worry, it will go to tree heaven to meet the big Redwood himself.
But if it’s bad, it will be made into a Bible!
Cathy in Seattle – I’m curious. Do people need to use some sort of rooting compound when they try to root cuttings from a willow?
PZ,
Don’t kill it!!!
It is possible to COPPICE it back, and keep it alive. If you whack off the side limbs, and take the trunk off just above the very bottom branch set, the willow will live, and regrow healthy branches.
It will look like the Whomping Willow in the Harry Potter movies…
Better than stumping it.
–MF
Bye bye, Mr. willow tree. I didn’t know you personally but I have met some of your relatives. It’s always very sad to see one of you go.
Not!
It’s always heartbreaking to watch a tree come down. I cried when my parents cut down their willow, but, like yours, it had taken to dropping large branches and turned out to be rotton all the way down to the ground. I’ll mourn for the loss of your beautiful tree tomorrow.
Your willow has shown that it’s a weak bastard, and it must be cut down. If it wasn’t such a haul for me, I’d offer to help by bringing beer, whiskey and matches.
The willow-of-creationist-dogma has got to be uprooted. The branch-of-creationism fell from the tree in past seasons, and thanks to PZ’s use of the winds-of-reason we have seen the fall of the branch-of-intelligent-design. Before it can cause harm to the garage-of-future-scientists… okay, I think I’ve gone on long enough.
Wow. Thought I’d never see the day when there was a dead-tree edition of Pharyngula.
PZ,
Don’t kill it!!!
It is possible to COPPICE it back, and keep it alive. If you whack off the side limbs, and take the trunk off just above the very bottom branch set, the willow will live, and regrow healthy branches.
It will look like the Whomping Willow in the Harry Potter movies…
Better than stumping it.
–MF
That’s an interesting idea — I’ll talk to the tree guy tomorrow morning and see if he thinks that’s feasible. There are some substantial hollows in the trunk below where the main branches diverge, though, so it might just be postponing the inevitable a few more years.
LOL @ Mike (#12) and Warren (#13).
It is sad to see a great tree come down, Dr. M, but every living thing has its time. I hope Skatje is still speaking to you. :-)
Many years ago, I read that willow rooted so easily that willow fences made of green enough wood were known to take root and grow.
This probably came out of a kids science (or gardening) book that I read in grade school, so I cannot vouch for accuracy.
I hope the tree can be saved. It would be a shame to destroy such an old and majestic thing.
The anecdote I recall involved some famous Upper Class person who, at the end of the hunt, stuck his freshly made dog whip in the ground and left it there.
Then in later years, people would point to the tree and name drop the fUCp. The tale probably has multiple locales, including the UK and Southern States. I didn’t check snopes.com
From personal experience, this works well with Cherry Laurel, Prunus laurocerasus known around here as English Laurel.
According to Richard Mabey’s Flora Britannica, in Northamptonshire, England, there is a row of willows which grew from 36 fenceposts planted by the aptly-named Johnny Pollard in the 1960s. Mabey also states that he has seen trees beside flooded gravel-pits which have grown from V-shaped willow rod-rests.
You could try saving a pole. Just stick it in the ground. It should grow.
(Ref. Richard Mabey, Flora Britannica,pub. Sinclair-Stevenson, UK, 1996)
Sorry to hear that your old willow is doomed. If you want to coppice it, you can cut it down almost to the ground to find sound wood. It should sprout all around the edges between the bark and the wood.
For many years, we had a willow in our back yard that came from a twig planted when I was tiny. Or my brother was five. I spent some of the nicest summers of my life in my teens draped over a Y-shaped branch, reading in the tree. My parents eventually had to cut it down — it was a couple of feet across at the base by then. So definitely plant a twig or two–they’ll be clones, after all, and you can’t have too many clones.
P.S. “Its” = belonging to it. Use “it’s” only for “it is.”
Willows don’t need rooting compound – they are rooting compound. Supposedly, putting some willow cuttings in the water where you’re trying to root other things will make them root better and faster.
You can do it with a hand saw if you want to climb up to the top and remove small branches and short sections and work your way down. I don’t recommend a chain saw because then you can’t hear ominous cracking sounds. When you get to the larger ones you can lower them by ropes IF you don’t make them too heavy. Just tie them to a car bumper or trailer hitch. Think a few undergrads and a pizza… beer afterwards! We did it with a maple tree once, after a neighbour built his house under a tree that leaned over a little and then complained that it was going to fall on him sooner or later. People!
Rugosa, that’s interesting about the willows being root-enhancers. I’m going to try it–yesterday we had to remove a young walnut tree that was growing up under our clothes line. I kept three green twigs to see if they would root.
You should let it rot. I bet it’d support some interesting fungi, and those are always fun to watch.
I second what Rugosa said. I make rooting compound by macerating willow tips in the water I’m rooting stuff in. It doesn’t keep well, though; you have to mash up the twig bits and put the moosh right into the water and add your plants immediately.
Wow, that’s a big tree to coppice. If it were mine, I’d root some switches too as a backstop. Yes, willow fences and erosion-control mats will root themselves; it’s a classic stream-restoration technique to stick lots of willow sticks into a bank.
I’ll tellya, though: Before planting switches or deciding about coppicing the big guy, take a hard look at the location of your water and especially sewer lines, and your neighbors’. Weeping willow is infamous for seeking out little leaks and invading the plumbing. And a tree’s roots are reputedly in a more-or-less circle whose radius is roughly one and a half times the height of the tree.
There might be someone in town who could use the lumber for small projects. I’d suggest offering twig bundles for stream resto use, but it’s not a native species. They make nifty wreaths, though, and there might be some Martha Stewart types who’d like them, or handcrafty groups like Girl Scouts or art classes.
Farewell, old tree.
I turn objects from wood such as this on my lathe. There could be some good use to be made of the wood, even if it’s not lumber quality. Wood that has rot, fungi and insect damage can be quite beautiful in that context.
Unfortunately it’s a little far for me to come by and pick up the scraps, but otherwise I’d turn something for you, PZ.
Or keep the bark for a lifetime supply of aceytlsalicylic acid for those pesky headaches!!
But seriously, I have a huuuuge willow at the back of my house, about 3-4 metres from the back wall. Your experience has me worried…perhaps I should get a tree surgeon to look at it. It hangs over the neighbour’s fence and I’d hate a branch to fall on their kids in the back yard. Or mine, come to think of it. On windy days at least one smallish branch drops off; perhaps it’s just a matter of time before a large one does.
Willows are very easy to root and vegetatively propagate. Just cut off a pencil-thick branch and put it in water.
Bonus: you can tell everyone it’s a clone. Mondo geek cred.
Words of advice from my arborist who checks out my multi-100 year-old maples:
1. Don’t coppice the tree. It will cause more problems than you’ll solve. And you’ll have to pay twice. Once when you screw up the tree and once when you remove the tree you’ve screwed up.
2. Trees drop branches. It’s frequently a normal process. Don’t be in a hurry to believe that this is a sign of impending death.
3. Many trees do have an effective life-span, after which they’re fragile and dangerous. If it has to go, do it quick, don’t mess around. Those dropping branches will have a good chance of killing you if they hit you.
Godsdamnit Firefox and mozex and Sciblogs…I’ve been trying to post this for the last fucking ½ hour, and keep getting an incomprehensible error message–and godsdamnit, I’m a software engineer, so when something is incomprehensible it is totally incomprehensible–and am now so fucking pissed off I’m about to explode…
Yeah, if it is feasible to coppice it, please consider the possibility–my parents had both a willow and a another tree I cannot actually recall the name of right now (having had a pint of British ale, a bottle of French wine, and a glass of Port ;-) (which, believe it or not, I don’t think has anything to do with the incomprehensible errors)) cut down when I was much younger. I wasn’t too happy then–the nameless tree was great for climbing in–and the willow was the only one in the area. Both also provided much-needed shade (this being in the desert in S.California), albeit one reason for cutting both down was the amount of water required…
That incident was perhaps the start of my strong environmentalist streak. I’ve been a regular contributor to Greenpeace in the c.30 years since…
blf:
Chop it down straightaway PZ! Greenpeace needs all the contributors they can get…
Cathy in Seattle – I’m curious. Do people need to use some sort of rooting compound when they try to root cuttings from a willow?
Posted by: Kelli | May 10, 2007 01:57 PM
Nope. As a few others here have mentioned, willows are ridiculously easy to start, even in just a glass of water. In fact, you can take the water used to root willows in, and use it as rooting elixir (cool word) for other cuttings from other plants.
Or keep the bark for a lifetime supply of aceytlsalicylic acid for those pesky headaches!!
I’ve read that mothers used to give teething babies willow twigs to chew (or gnaw) on to lessen the pain of tender sore little baby gums.
The word “Aceytlsaicylic” comes fromSalix.
try 2:
Or keep the bark for a lifetime supply of aceytlsalicylic acid for those pesky headaches!!
I’ve read that mothers used to give teething babies willow twigs to chew (or gnaw) on to lessen the pain of tender sore little baby gums.
The word “Aceytlsalicylic” comes from Salix.
I am definitely hogging the blog. Ha ha.
Cathy in Seattle…”rooting elixir” takes on a special meaning here in Australia. Where, as you may or may not know, “root” is slang for sexual intercourse. It can be a noun or a verb. Versatile!! This is why we love hearing Americans announce they’re “rooting for the team”.
Sorry about going so far OT.
PZ, if the willow can’t be saved, you might want to check with Home Depot for their reintroduction of the magnificent American elm (Princeton variety), although they’re mainly being sold on the east coast I think. However, Bruce Carley at http://www.elmpost.org says that the “Valley Forge” variety may be even more splendid than the “Princeton”.
I would say, don’t hesitate to cut it back almost to the ground; odds are that the stump will throw out suckers and essentially coppice itself.
Of course, there is much to be said for taking advice from your professional tree guy, rather than a series of random people on the internet….
But willows WILL spring back to life given half a chance. Or a quarter of a chance. Or an eighth of a chance. You get the idea.
The nature of the hormonal-chemical-whatevers that cause willow to root so easily (and induce other plants to root) would probably make an interesting post. Pharyngula often deals with animal biology, but rarely with plants.
Doesn’t anybody know that good willows become cricket bats when they die?
A study of the cuttings of Salix atrocinerea Brot. was made by extraction with methanol, paper chromatography and Avena coleoptile straight growth test. In the acidic fraction, indole-3-acetic acid (IAA; about 15 μg per kg fresh weight) and p-hydroxybenzoic acid (PHB; about 850 μg per kg fresh weight) were isolated and identified. The growth activity of the different zones is explained by their content of these two compounds. The watersoluble residue, insoluble in ether, showed growth Stimulating activity, which probably is due to a bound auxin (IAA-sugar); alkaline breakdown of this aqueous residue, giving PHB, vanillic and p-coumaric acids, suggests the presence (in the cuttings of Salix atrocinerea) of glycosides with aglycones similar to rhamnacine and scutellareine.
Found this here.
But this is just something my friends and I have picked up, being King County Master Gardeners.