An Emerald Ash Borer was first identified in the United States in 2002. Since then they have killed over ten million trees, and have nine million to go before they run out of stock in the US. It’s an Asian insect with no local predators except for woodpeckers. Asian ashes have evolved a high tannin content that dissuades the insects. American ashes have not, save for a species of Blue Ash that doesn’t occur in New England.
One of the telltale signs of ash borer is bark split. This is an ash on our property.
Ash borers plant eggs in the bark. The larvae dig under it and chew through the tree’s vascular system, creating curvilinear tracks known as galleries. This interrupts the flow of water and nutrients through the tree and kills it in several years.
A forester informed us that you can treat the trees with insecticides for $250 each and buy them a few years. We opted instead to harvest the ashes that were close enough to fall on the house. They’re drying out in a stack that I’ll do something with one day. Ashes grow straight, season quickly, and burn well, and a long history of the wood in American life is in view of coming to an end.
Sickened ashes tend to fall apart in chunks before they fall over for good. The windstorms last week took down a thirty-foot bough that managed to hang on a single neighboring tree that hardly looks big enough to hold it. There it sways in the wind at face height, evocative of a Calder mobile. I donned snowshoes, took the camera out, and recorded this temporary art installation in the above video.
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Our current title in the Asynchronous Studio Book Club is What Is Art? by Leo Tolstoy. For more information, see the ASBC homepage.
The current exhibition in the Dissident Museum is David Curcio: The Point of the Needle.
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