Tree of Heaven

farm_03, a photo by paynehollow on Flickr.

Yesterday, a group of unnamed farmers traipsed through the early fall forest in search of Trees of Heaven, in order to mark them for destruction.

Tree of Heaven - ailanthus - you see, is an invasive species. Part of our forestry plan included the process of getting rid of these trees in the woods around the homestead. And the thing is, you can't just cut them down. When you do that, the trees go into defensive mode and send out roots all around the cut-down tree, so instead of one Tree of Heaven, you end up with three or four.

So, we had to mark the trees while the leaves were still on (so as to be more easily identified) to be chemically removed later on in the fall.

There were a goodly number of these invaders. Certainly dozens were identified before I left, and they were still working on it beyond that.

And so, if you were to visit the woods at the Unnamed Farm in the next few weeks, you would see tree after tree marked "Danger" and "Caution."

And that's the news this week.

(I will add, editorially, that it seems wrong, somehow, to mark a plant called "Tree of Heaven" for destruction... Perhaps they should have called them "Trees of Perdition...")