Mother Nature’s Moment - July 2021
by: Lesley Bruce Smith, ISA Certified Arborist

It has been a “good” year for funky leaf galls, or a bad year, I guess, depending on how you look at it. Galls are “abnormal vegetable growths caused by various agents, such as, insects, nematodes, fungi, bacteria, viruses, chemicals and or mechanical injury”. When our clients ask about these funny bumps on their tree leaves, I usually stop at the short explanation that they are completely harmless to the tree and normally caused by beneficial insects that lay their eggs in the leaf tissue which causes the strange growth they are seeing.

Backyard Wisdom
by Gilbert A Smith, ISA Certified Master Arborist

Every one knows that the birds need trees for protection, perches, for hunting grounds and to nest and raise families in. Did you know that trees need birds? Of course they do. This symbiosis or mutualism doesn’t just apply to worms, ants, people and trees it also is the case for birds. When you hear the knock knock knock of a woodpecker you’re hearing a bird mining a tree for insects that may be harming the tree. Some experts estimate that 17% of the Emerald Ash Borer are eaten by wood peckers. Unfortunately that’s not enough to keep the Borer from killing our Ash trees. Because it was introduced without its natural controlling insects and diseases the borer has gone wild and with it the population of wood peckers has soared.