Free the trees!

TOWN AND COUNTRY

By Gregory DL Morris
Columnist

Our green spaces are among the best things about Chapel Hill, Carrboro, and Hillsborough. The emeralds in the crown are the greenways along our watercourses – notably Battle Branch, Bolin Creek, and the Eno River – but our neighborhoods are also leafy havens for myriad living things.

All of those green spaces, from the parks and water course to our back yards and school yards, are in grave danger from invasive plants of which the archvillain, the Cthulu of the plant realm, wisteria.

A badly beleaguered tree burdened with decades-old wisteria vines along the Battle Branch Greenway. Besides the dark brown tree to the right, everything else in this picture is wisteria, easily recognized by its grey-green mottled bark and ropey, twining pattern.

Nothing eats invasive wisteria because it’s toxic, so without human intervention, it overruns everything. It smothers trees, aggressively depriving them of light, water, air, and nutrients. In the worst cases, the vines wrap tightly around the trunk, cutting off circulation and strangling the tree. Every year, dead and weakened trees fall on power lines and houses all over town.

https://thelocalreporter.press/wisteria-increases-trees-vulnerability-to-storm-damage/

Amid all this devastation, no one seems to notice. A few community organizations are at work to remove wisteria and other invasives. For example, the Tri-County Conservationists, the local chapter of the North Carolina Wildlife Federation (of which the columnist has been a member), has been active along the Bolin Creek Trail in collaboration with the Town of Chapel Hill.

https://ncwf.org/community-wildlife-chapter/

However, the invasion is far worse than a few community activists can ever beat back. Local governments, utilities, businesses and homeowners are frankly not doing their part.

The Behemoth: the base of the coiled grey-green wisteria vine in front is almost as thick as the brown trunk of the tree behind it.

The Battle Branch trails are a case in point. The North Carolina Botanical Garden does a great job of clearing invasives from Battle Park, but not one inch further, which is literally nearsighted because unchecked wisteria along the town’s Battle Branch Trail is now within a few yards of the park.

To its credit, the town has been eager to facilitate volunteer removal projects. But there does not seem to be any effort beyond that. Budgets and staffing are tight, and many pressing needs exist. The parks department quickly dispatch crews to clear trails when a wisteria-killed tree falls, but an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

OWASA runs a brush-cutting expedition along its easements every year or two but looks no farther than the edge of the right-of-way, even though some of the heaviest decades-old vines are smothering and strangling trees with the sight of the cleared trail.

Duke Power is the same. They come around every few years and spray herbicide on vines, climbing power poles and a few feet around the base, but that’s it. Again, not doing anything about heavy infestations on nearby trees that will only keep spreading to poles and lines.

If the organizations are unwilling to be proactive, the least they could do would be a public education campaign to alert homeowners to the perils.

The Strangler: this wisteria vine, thicker than a human arm, will kill this tree in a few years if it is not cut away.

And you, dear neighbor, now you know. So go out to your yard, to the nearest greenway, and witness. It’s easy to see the heavy grey interwoven vines in all their sinuous menace during winter. When you drive Franklin St., where the hill is steepest south of Estes, look to the left and right and sorrow for the devastation. Then pick up lopers and a saw and free the trees!

https://thelocalreporter.press/wisteria-dis-lodge/

*Gregory DL Morris sits on the TLR board and is a regular correspondent. Morris’s opinions are his alone and do not necessarily reflect those of The Local Reporter.

Gregory DL Morris is a business journalist and historian who reports regularly for TLR.

This reporter can be reached at Info@TheLocalReporter.press