COVER STORY
What is
happening to our trees? by Lori Bradley
In her captivating short story “What a Girl Knows About Trees” Somerset writer Kathryn Kulpa shares her love for our largest form of vertical vegetation. “Trees are your friends. They won’t let you fall,” she writes. “A girl’s mother told her this once and the girl never forgot it, and never was afraid to climb to the tallest tops and look out past hedgy borders dividing yard from yard, high enough to see the ocean, or, on foggy days, at least the neighbor’s swimming pool.”
M
y parents also nurtured a crop of old apple orchard trees in our backyard where my siblings and most of the neighborhood children gathered to play – climbing into the flowers in the midst of hordes of humming bees in the spring and launching apple wars with the mucky, fermenting fruit that covered the ground in late fall. It was bittersweet play, though. My mother was sure the people who
18
were going to buy our house would cut down the apple trees – and she was right – but sweet memories of that small orchard accompany me into adulthood. Like the new residents of our house, many people are cavalier about trees. People still cut through vegetation with abandon when a new warehouse is needed near the highway, or a housing development takes the place of farmland. Decorative but invasive
November 2023 | The South Coast Insider
species are planted for natural fencing, or for beauty, then quickly take over and destroy native plants. Humans have always treated trees as a convenience, an annoyance, or purely as a valued construction material. Lately though, with warmer weather leaving stands of skeletal bare trees or trees showing yearround browning and wilted leaves throughout the South Coast, people are starting to wonder what is happening to the landscape and express anxiety about the changes to beloved places. Proximity to the ocean seems to hasten the changes that are taking place across Massachusetts, and it can be psychologically and ecologically devastating to watch favorite tree varieties die off and leave forests looking thin and forlorn. Tree damage to homes is becoming more prevalent and some homeowners opt to cut favorite trees rather than risk an accident. Sadly, some
