[Magdalen] Nature goes tee hee

[Cantor03 at aol.com]

In a message dated 11/21/2014 9:39:33 A.M. Eastern Standard Time,  
jay.weigel at gmail.com writes:

The  street I grew up on in Madison, WI was 2 blocks long and had a canopy
of  elms. When Dutch elm disease arrived they were cut down and maples
planted.  We visited in the 1980s and those maples were still fairly young,
but when  we came back again in 2001 they had grown and were almost a canopy
over the  street again. Thank goodness they were not silver maples, which
are a trash  tree IMO.>>>
 
When my father built our home in NW Wisconsin in 1916, the entire  area
was covered with a forest of mature Northern Pin Oaks (Hill's Oak;  Quercus
ellipsoidalis) some of which may have been the largest of this  species.
 
The oaks were thinned out and a lot of elms planted which, by the time of  
the
Dutch Elm Disease in the 1970's had reached very large size.
 
I've told the story before of the remarkable planting by the village of  
rows
of Bitternut Hickory (Carya cordiformis) along the street and the  
boulevards.
Enter some idiot "village engineer" who decided the hickories were a  menace
to curbs and gutters, and the then 40' hickories fell under the ax.
 
Now there are no plantings along the street.  
 
Sic transit gloria mundi.
 
 
David Strang.