One thing that Trees are good at is taking their time. They grow slowly, they change slowly, and they react slowly, (what I wouldn’t do to have that attribute). Whatever they look like now is really just a reflection of how they felt 6 months to a year ago. If it was rainy and wet then, chances are they are nice and green now. Stressed looking? It was tough times for them 6 months ago. It’s just the way they are. They do everything in slow motion. Maybe that’s why they live so long?
I had to make the 290 drive from Houston/Cypress area to ATX this past weekend and sure enough, they were telling me what was secretly going on under the cover of the canopy 6 months ago… Not that I couldn’t do the math… we were in a huge drought… The Pine Beetle (Dendoctronus Frontalis) population getting ready to explode. Well, it has officially exploded. There are brown trees everywhere. Dead or in the process of dying, it’s the same thing, with a different schedule.
Once a Pine Tree gets Pine Beetle, it’s over. There is no saving it. The SPB is an insect that hits in large numbers, or it loses the fight. Trees have a natural defense mechanism called pitch, we call it sap. Picture in your mind what happens when you take a screwdriver and ram it into the side of a tree… Sap comes oozing out. That sap protects the tree from disease, and insects like SPB trying to get in. As the beetle is chewing a hole in the tree, the sap comes out and suffocates the the SPB. It’s a great defense… until things get dry and the tree has no moisture to pitch out, or the SPB attacks in such large numbers it’s overwhelming to the Pine. That’s when the SPB starts really winning and killing trees, all while growing it’s own numbers.
When you stop and think about it, that is the whole point of the SPB’s existence, to clear out the weak and old Pine Trees. The problem now is with sporadic weather patterns, A Trees health goes up and down in the course of a single year. So a young tree in a drought situation will smell like an old tree to SPB, and they will try to kill it and raise their young in it.
Since the Pine Tree is dead once the beetle is in, the battle is won or lost at the bark layer. We can treat trees so there is product in the bark waiting. That way if the tree is stressed, it will still win the battle and be there for your grandkids to climb on one day…