Every horticulturist in Colorado will tell you “don’t plant aspens in the city.” They’re short-lived, don’t do well, can’t stand the heat, send out suckers, etc. But I did it anyway, because I wanted a bit of the mountains in my urban yard. I planted two out by the back fence and one close to the house. And they took off like rockets. My very own aspen trees. In my yard.
Then, about three summers ago, I noticed one of those out by the fence didn’t look happy. Some of the leaves on one side turned brown long before fall. It was worse last summer. About half of the double-trunked tree looked dead. Still I thought maybe it would come around. But this spring it was obvious; the tree was dead. There were no green leaves up top, only a few brown ones. And no green showing when I scratched a branch.
I was still enjoying the pretty white trunks until, after a particularly windy day, I noticed an alarming crack in the bark — the kind of big horizontal crack you might see if a tree is getting ready to fall. And there was only one narrow place that tree could fall without hitting my house, a neighbor’s house, and/or several fences. It had to come down before it fell down.
So a few weeks ago the professionals showed up, and like a couple of Oregon lumberjacks, they made two carefully placed cuts and brought that tree down in the only place where it wouldn’t hit anything. I was very impressed.
They cut it up, ran the pieces through a truly terrifying commercial wood chipper, and left. A few days later another crew ground down the stump.
Now there’s a big gap where my aspen used to be, where it stood perfectly placed to block the view from a neighbor’s deck into my living room, and vice versa. I knew aspens were short-lived, but 12 years wasn’t nearly enough.
It feels very strange to have planted a little whip of a tree — and see it mature and die in my lifetime.
oh, that is so sad on many levels.
I’m reminded now that it also helped block the sun when it was low in a summer sky.
Any time you lose a tree it’s sad, but especially aspens.
So true. I know aspens don’t belong in the city, and I could lose the other two at any time, but until then, I’ll treasure every quaking leaf.
We have a lot of them in northern and eastern Arizona, in the mountains. They are one of my favorite trees, but I didn’t know they were relatively short-lived. They do send out suckers and some forests have acres of aspens all connected underground to the “mother” tree that started them all.
Google defines short-lived as 60 to 70 years for aspen, which certainly seemed long enough for my purposes. But that probably means when they’re in their natural habitat — not in the city. You’ve probably heard of the Pando clone, the largest known organism on earth — one mother aspen tree with more than 47,000 trunks (covering 106 acres) — in Utah.
This is a good story of evolutionary adaptation, i.e., that native varieties of plants and animals do better. Llife is fine-tuned over millions of years. I have a native pin-oak on the south side of the house that started out as a mere sapling 24 years ago. It is now huge and healthy and shades my roof in the summer. The squirrels love it too.
Hard to beat a big oak or maple. Your oak is obviously very happy. And probably will be for many years to come. Aspens have a real purpose in the mountains. They’re the first trees to come in after a fire, holding the soil until longer lived trees get established or re-established. Meanwhile, they make great munchies for elk and building material for beavers.
What is wrong with the aspen, Colorado ?
(See what I did there ?)
I ain’t nevah hoid of a tree that has so brief a life …
Don’t know what happened to it. Heat,
drought, insects, or disease are possibilities. Some of those things are treatable if diagnosed but it can get expensive and often doesn’t work. Drought and insects took out a lot of trees in this area this summer.
Coincidentally, that neighbor directly behind me also had a dead tree in his backyard. I just noticed it’s gone. The companies that remove dead trees are having a boom year here. My son reports a lot of dead trees, mature street trees, being removed in his neighborhood a mile north of here. So sad. The Denver metro is a high plains area and the trees we enjoy must all be intentionally planted.