Our Ash Tree

By: Greta L.
Playing outside was something my family did a lot. Whether it was hide and go seek, tag,  walking in our woods, playing on our swings, or climbing a trees, we were always out there.  Climbing trees was always special though, especially because we had a main “climbing tree,” which was an ash tree. This was convenient because our play structure had that tree towering over it, making it feel like a playground. Something fun and had adventure.

Soon the Emerald ash borer came to Vermont, eating away at the all ash trees, including ours. I then suddenly heard the talk about the ash tree in our yard maybe needing to be cut down because of the Emerald Ash Borers, and possibly other numerous ash trees as well. Our climbing and play structure tree was something that was constantly growing in our yard, so having it not in our yard would feel so different.

Whirling, dancing, free at last!  I was weightless, lighter than air, a tiny seed of an ash tree. I had not a care in the world. I felt the warm summer breeze carry me farther and farther from my mother tree and from familiar land. Then, the gust of wind ceased and I felt myself falling slowly, peacefully to the edge of a meadow, a cornfield in fact. I landed in a shady area and sat still and silent, waiting for a minute, an hour, a day, a week. After seven days of sitting in the shady undergrowth on the border between a forest and a cornfield, I heard a rustling sound. A large animal (which I did not know was called a deer) walked my way and covered me with dark, rich, soil as she passed. Then the rains came. Rain poured down day and night for two days straight. I was wet and covered in soil, a perfect time to spread my roots and begin reaching for the sun. I pushed up and before I knew it, there I was again, except this time I was a sprout.

The emerald ash borer is an insect that is rapidly closing in on almost all of North America's ash trees, threatening to destroy all but 0.3% of them, all except for a select species called the blue ash. So, rather than injecting all of our ash trees with pesticides, or chopping them all down, we should look further into this resistant species.

The emerald ash borer kills ash trees by eating the layer underneath the bark of the tree, or the Cambium, but that’s the same thing many native North American insects do. The problem isn’t how the emerald ash borer is killing the ash trees, it’s the circumstances. The emerald ash borer is an invasive species with no natural predators, and since our ash trees have never seen the insect before, they have no defenses yet. Also the emerald ash borer, though it does not move very far on its own, moves easily because of humans.