Killed another one

Monday, 11:38 am

By Kate

May

23

2005

Okay, that’s not quite right. I didn’t kill my dogwood tree. It fell victim to the plague—some dogwood tree disease called Discula destructiva. According to a recent article in the Boston Globe, Plagued dogwood trees still stand tall for New Englanders, one of my dogwood trees, that wasted away for two years and finally died over the winter, had that disease. It had all the symptoms including the slow and miserable death. The disease gained a foothold and then overcame the tree through the good offices of the weather gods who threw a severe drought (and water bans) at it the first year and then dumped copious amounts of rain on it last year. Dogwood trees don’t like perpetually wet leaves. But the plague loves wet dogwood leaves. The plague especially likes perpetually wet trees already in a weakened state. So now I have to dig the poor dead thing out of the ground and replace it with something that has a cast iron constitution.

That’s tree number two that hasn’t survived in that location. First my Japanese maple suddenly curled up its toes and now my dogwood.

I’m inclined to forget about buying another finicky, fragile ornamental and opt for transplanting one of the hardy maple tree saplings from out behind the house. There’s nothing that says I wouldn’t instantly kill it by planting it where it didn’t intend to grow, but my experience with these maple trees suggests it would take a direct hit from a lightning bolt to kill them. Tenacious things that hang on for dear life even when I do try to kill them—for the crime of growing where they’re not supposed to grow. It would seem, since they chose to set up housekeeping in my back yard, that they like my little patch of soil. They are true native trees. I think that’s what I’ll try. We’ll see how long I can keep a transplanted one alive.