Saving the trees, one ash at a time | Tianjin Bar Cart Co.,Ltd

Staff Writer

SALEM — On a bright, warm August morning, three arborists with buckets of tools, small hoses, and SavATree uniforms stood under an ash tree at 38 Summer St.

Walking under the tree, one might think it’s healthy. It has ample leaves outside of a mostly leafless crown, through which it provides decent sidewalk shade, and it has what appears to be intact bark.

The fact that the topmost leaves have rapidly died off with little warning, ultimately, caused the workers to consider the tree a lost cause. It will die, likely within the year, and that death can’t be curtailed. Though the tree is still alive, there’s no hope for its future.

“38 is a no,” said Ben Dugdale, the arborist leading the trio, as the team moved on to the next tree over — 40 Summer St., an ash tree which has lost many, but not as many, leaves at its crown.

“I’d file this under ‘maybe,’” added Alex Prodanas, another arborist, looking over the tree at 40 Summer. “Usually, with like 30% (of leaves) gone, if you’re 30% gone, you’re going to face some challenges with the tree taking up the material.”

The trees are all victim of the emerald ash borer — a beautiful, shimmering green insect that’s barely half an inch long. Over the last several months, beetle larvae have been boring throughout the trees’ vascular systems undetected, effectively making it impossible for the tree to get water from its roots.

But they aren’t the only ones facing an infestation. In other parts of Salem, entire clusters of ash trees have already been wiped out.

Chris Burke, a hobby arborist who donated the funds to save the trees on North Street, wants to tell you their story.

Forest River Park, an ash tree graveyard

Walk through one of Salem’s largest parks at Forest River and you don’t have to travel far to find the destruction wrought by the emerald ash borer. Walk the gravel path to the recently opened pool there, and to the left of the path, close to 30 dead ash trees still stand as evidence of the battle that claimed them with little fanfare.

Their bark is covered in small, D-shaped holes — the paths through which adult ash borers exit the tree and continue their life cycle within the bark of another host.

“It’s very localized,” Burke said, standing in the middle of the cluster of dead ash trees. “In Andover, it was up there eight to 10 years ago, and until three years ago, I hadn’t noticed a single ash tree die in Salem.

“Now, they’ve descended on Salem and are most active here,” Burke said, pointing to the ground at Forest River Park. “They (the trees) probably took about 18 months to die.”

One ash tree lost to the beetle stands within the perimeter of the new multimillion-dollar pool facility. It served as a backdrop to the pool’s grand opening in 2022 and seemed healthy at the time; today, the tree has nothing left.

“When they’re infected, you see die-back on the top. That’s where it starts,” Burke said. “The beetle gets in there. The flow of water and nutrients go up the cambrium, and that’s where the beetle is active, worming around in there and blocking the fluids from going up the tree.”

With a vascular system reduced to Swiss cheese, the tree begins to go bald — the leaves furthest from water die first, leaving a leafless crown as the first sign of trouble. Leaves then die down the length of the tree as the borer’s internal damage grows over time.

Native bird and insect species that have evolved alongside the ash tree will also be disrupted when they’re gone, Burke noted.

“The ash trees are a native tree, which means they’ve co-evolved with our other plants, insects, birds,” he said. “All these native trees support a coterie (small group) of specific caterpillars — and without these native caterpillars, native birds can’t fledge.”

Hope from a bucket and bike pump

Caught early enough, the borers can be stopped by adding an invasive chemical to the tree’s vascular system — one that in the correct doses does little to hurt the tree but forces the borers to jump ship or die trying.

Back on Summer Street, SavATree arborist Susan Hamilton stood over a yellow bucket of tools. She pumped air into a canister using a bike pump, and drilled four holes at the base of the tree at 40 Summer — the one SavATree determined had a shot at survival.

Hamilton then inserted four clear, empty hoses into the freshly drilled holes, opening valves at the end of each hose as a blue pesticide began flowing through the lines. Over the course of about 10 minutes, the fluid vanished into the tree.

The tree at 40 Summer drank every drop of medicine, in other words. The treatment will work for about two years, Hamilton said, keeping the tree infection-free and allowing it to slowly restore what has been lost.

Other parts of Salem already benefit from efforts to save ash trees. That includes Mary Jane Lee Park in The Point, where 10 ash trees were recently treated mostly using city funds authorized through the Parks and Recreation department, Burke explained.

It can cost about $300 to treat an average-sized ash tree, Burke said. The results speak for themselves.

“You can see where they were starting to get a little die-back,” he said, pointing to seven trees in a row along the edge of the park, each with a canopy that looked like it was growing back. “I think we caught it in time.”

While the city covered the efforts to save nine of the 10 trees, the 10th — a solitary ash tree in the middle of the park — was paid for by the insistence of the Salem Native Nursery, of which Burke is a member.

“It’s a group of about six of us,” Burke said. “We propagate native plants from seed we gather locally, and we buy seedlings from the New Hampshire Nursery.”

The hope is with greater awareness of the ash borer, more trees can be saved — and with them sticking around, other native bird and insect species that lean on the trees for life will stay on the North Shore.

Walking down Summer Street as his crew treated ash trees along the lower North Street corridor, Dugdale said saving an ash is like saving a historic home.

“The houses are worth preserving. These trees are just an extension of that,” Dugdale said. “Go online. Look up the identification, figure out how to figure out if it’s an ash tree — and if you do (have an ash tree), it’s wise to treat it proactively. Don’t wait until it gets to the point of... oh, shoot.”

Contact Dustin Luca at 978-338-2523 or [email protected]. Follow him at facebook.com/dustinluca or on Twitter @DustinLucaSN.

Staff Writer

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