Community Service Portfolio

The Red Oak and the Silver Birch

While removing invasives from the landscape is best done during the dormant period, it’s always good to get rid of these plants to protect the local flora and make room for the understory.

Invasives are the first to leaf out in the spring, so they provide obvious clues about their identity.  On April 4, we did some work at Flanders, and our focus was on the burning bush choking the understory.  After five hours of work, we were able to clear the area around some magnificent hardwoods, including a towering red oak and a neighboring silver birch–equally tall even though the oak is significantly older than the birch.

Walking on the soft ground of the understory is not ideal because it leads to soil compression where the spring ephemerals are about to make their comeback.  However, we were careful to choose our steps and cut away as many invasives as possible each time we stepped into the woods.  Another consideration we have made is that the long-term benefits of removing the prolific invasives outweighs the impact of our footfall.  Since we were just two people who were intentionally careful, this made sense.  Had we a large group of volunteers, our efforts would have been concentrated along the edge of the trail to minimize our impact on the soil.

Working as a team of two, we were able to clear the area around some birch  and oak saplings as well as two very grand trees–the red oak and the silver birch. 

The oak had an interesting problem in that bittersweet had made its way up one side and grapevine, up the other. While bittersweet is invasive, the grapevine is not. Nevertheless, it is an aggressive vine that develops huge leaves that smother the canopies of host trees. So it felt really great to cut both and leave it to the wind to bring them down.  Looking up, it was easy to see that the tree is thriving, except where the two vines have established a tight grip. There, the oak has stopped sending resources, and the limbs are dying off.  This is a normal process, according to Basil Camu in his book From Wasteland to Wonder, Easy Ways We Can Help Earth Heal in the Sub/urban Landscape (Leaf & Limb 2024).

Oaks are a keystone species whose leaves feed caterpillars and other insects and whose acorns provide protein, fat, and carbohydrates to local and migratory birds as well as to mammals.  In addition, oaks are home to bats, birds, bees, and other critters.

For its part, the silver birch will be home to more than 300 insect species, becoming an open-air buffet to myriad birds. Like the oak, it will be a source of shelter for birds and a preventer of soil erosion.

The silver birch was surrounded by shoots of burning bush.  I cut, rather than pulled, these.  While removing roots is vitally important, I did not want to disturb the soil at this sensitive time of year.  We will need to monitor this area, but for now the understory has a chance to thrive without competing for air, light, and soil, and the mature trees are free as well.

Removing Burning Bush

Identifying burning bush in the early spring is fairly simple.  The bark has tan and green stripes, and older plants have winglike ridges along the stems.  Also, the plants are among the earliest to green and to develop pink leaf buds.

The tricky park is in distinguishing them from neighboring shrubs and saplings in the understory, particularly when they are wrapped around those neighbors.  Then, the old adage to measure twice and cut once comes into play. It’s important to focus on the plant you want to remove and be sure to have the correct trunk before you ready the loppers.