The Return of the Trees

November 4th, 2022

Imagine a tree that has mostly disappeared from the landscape. So much so, that most people have forgotten it was ever there. Imagine it was an edible species with a bountiful harvest each year that fed and nourished people and wildlife. Imagine it was a host plant to various species of caterpillars that mostly ate this species and were, in turn, food to the large numbers of songbirds and animals that would migrate through in spring, summer or fall.

When most people hear about the disappearance of such a tree, they feel sad and disheartened, disempowered. I can relate. But what if we turned that sadness and despair to fuel for planting? Some of these disappearing species: chestnut, oak, papaws, butternut, walnut, hickory, elm, hackberry, and pinion pine, to name a few, don't have to "disappear."

When a forest gets deforested, whatever tree seeds are present get "first dibs" on regrowing in an area. If a diversity of seeds is available, that's great! But so often only a few species of seeds come in after such a large disturbance. Nature has enlisted several important seed planters like squirrels and bluejays, to take the best nuts, seeds, and acorns, and plant them nearby. But what if we've cut down, lost, or burned too many species in too wide a radius around us? What if a tree's specialized seed planter is no longer around? Who then can plant them back into a region or watershed? We can!

It's time we humans remembered who we are. We are part of nature. We always have been. We've just forgotten. If squirrels, chipmunks, and bluejays are working hard to plant the species they love, then why not join them? It starts with us noticing what is there. By noticing who is missing. And why.

We must be careful as we go to plant native species that will do well in an area where they are added. It's too easy to create problems by planting mindlessly. It requires observation and openness to read the language of a landscape. To be able to read if the land is healthy and building in resilience or if it is being degraded and depleted over time.

Native species that are under-represented in our landscapes NEED us. Bluejays and squirrels can only do so much if the source trees are gone from a landscape. We humans can be on the lookout for disease-resistant, strong, and abundant varieties around us as well as where they might be missing. The small act of 'putting a seed in the ground' can support the Return of the Trees that our landscapes still have memories of.'

Pawpaws are strange. They love moist soil and can grow as an understory tree under Black Walnuts (many plants can't!). They produce an abundance of weirdly tropical fruit in the fall in temperate forests in North America that feed people and wildlife alike and are host plants to the Zebra Swallowtail butterfly whose caterpillars only eat pawpaw leaves. Pawpaws' old partners in propagation were ground sloths and mammoths who spread them far and wide by eating the fruits from one patch to another and then dropping fresh seeds in their dung. The seeds aren't edible so bluejays, squirrels, and chipmunks (our friendly neighborhood tree planters!) have no reason to bury the seeds. We've unknowingly cut down so many pawpaw patches as the East Coast forests were leveled for one reason or another throughout the centuries, that pawpaws have slowly disappeared. And they will continue to disappear unless we plant them back. 'Cause, the mammoths aren't going to do it for us...

The more I thought about it, the more I wondered if it was possible that a human had planted this lone, young sapling in the middle of the woods. What if a few years earlier, a human stood where I was standing now on what used to be a hiking trail, had reached down, and buried a young pawpaw seed right here? Or even tossed the seed haphazardly from a fruit they were eating as they hiked along this path? It was possible. The sapling was only a few years old.