Carrying on

When the needles are gone, a dead tree may still be green. A pale, ghostly green, but still busy converting sunlight to sugars. And providing sustenance and shelter to the forest creatures.

Hair lichen on dead trees.

Look for eagles atop trees like this.

The tree may be dead, but life goes on, and thrives.

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Cuando un árbol muerto ha perdido sus hojas, puede seguir verde. Un verde fantasmal, pero vivo, consistiendo de líquenes filamentosos que siguen convirtiendo la luz del sol a carbohidratos, sirviendo de sustento y albergue a las criaturas del bosque. La vida persiste, y prospera.

Fotos: árboles de hoja perenne, ya muertos, cubiertos de líquenes filamentosos.

Not done yet

I am always intrigued by standing dead trees. I take their photos every time I'm in the woods, usually only to delete them; they're so often tangled in among branches of live trees and behind shrubs. Difficult to see clearly, even on the spot.

I found a few standing alone by the water.

Half gone.

These trees are an important part of a healthy forest system. They serve as housing, food sources, lookouts, and drumming posts for a great variety of wildlife: insects, birds, bats, chipmunks and squirrels, even the occasional bear (in a larger snag). 

This one still retains most of its bark. Beneath that bark, woodpeckers will find ants and beetles and other grubs. There may be a chickadee nest or roosting hole; they make tiny holes, under 2 inches across, in dead trees and branches over 4 inches in diameter. When they're nesting, the female stays in the nest overnight, and the male makes himself a separate "bedroom" nearby. Other birds, woodpeckers and nuthatches, owls and swallows, buffleheads and mergansers, among many, look for larger dead trees.

Two and some half trees on the shore of the beaver pond.

Tall trees like these serve as good lookout roosts for hawks and other hunters.

Life has been a struggle for this one, in the wetlands beside McCreight Lake.

The moss that covers many of the branches becomes extra habitat for tiny critters, from beetles to grubs to spiders.

I think I see several small holes in this tall snag.

Not quite dead yet; there are a few needles on some branches.

Bats and some small birds hide behind flaking bark. And of course, there are smaller critters. I pulled loose bark off several dead trees, finding mostly sowbugs and millipedes this time.

Tomorrow: more dead trees.

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Siempre me llaman la atención los árboles muertos todavía en pie. Cada vez que ando en el bosque, les saco fotos, las que llegando a casa veo y borro, pues los árboles están por regla general enredados entre ramas de otros árboles, estos vivos, y medio escondidos tras una maraña de arbustos. Son difíciles de ver claro, hasta en el sitio.

Encontré algunos que se levantan frente al agua.

Estos árboles son una parte integral de un sistema forestal sano. Sirven como alojamiento, central de abastos, puestos de observación, y tambores para una gran variedad de animales, tales como insectos, pájaros, murciélagos, ardillas y ardillitas, y hasta uno que otro oso (en los árboles muertos más grandes).

Este, en la primera foto, todavía retiene la mayor parte de su corteza. Debajo de esa corteza, los pájaros carpinteros hallarán escarabajos, hormigas, y otros bichos. Puede haber un nido de pajarito carbonero; hacen hoyos muy pequeños, de unos 4 cm. de diámetro en árboles y ramas muertos desde 10 cm para arriba. Cuando tienen cría, la hembra pasa la noche en el nido, y el macho se hace otra "recámara" en una rama cercana. Otros pájaros, los carpinteros, los trepatroncos, los buhos y las golondrinas, los porrones y las serretas, entre muchos otros, escogen árboles muertos más grandes.

Debajo de la corteza media despegada, murciélagos y algunos pájaros pequeños se esconden para dormir. Y claro, hay muchos insectos y otras criaturas miniaturas. Esta vez arranqué varios trozos de algunos árboles, encontrando, ahora, solo cochinillas y milpiés.

Mañana habrá más árboles muertos.

Crumbling

There is a tendency to look at the "pretty" things: the fresh green leaves, the dewy flowers, the blue skies and billowing clouds. Sometimes, though, I stop to look at things falling apart.

Like these dead branches and stumps.

Pine tree, crumbling but still standing.

Stump, spilling its innards,

Dead stick and cones in the duff.

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Acostumbramos mirar las cosas bellas: las hojas nuevas, verdes; las flores con sus colores frescas, el cielo azul y las nubes blancas, como almohadas. Pero de vez en cuando se me ocurre fijarme en cosas que se están desbaratando.

Como estos troncos y palos muertos.

Tall

A few trees, from here and there.

Somewhere along the highway near Woss.

I wonder; why is it that snags so often are taller than the forest surrounding them? Did they become snags because they stood out and took the worst of the weather? Or just because they're old? Or did all the other dead trees fall, and these were the toughest? Just wondering.

Nearly home.

I pass this tree several times a week, about 4 minutes from home. No matter how humdrum the day has been, this tree draws my eye upward, away from traffic and road bumps and the shopping list I've been reciting. It immediately changes my outlook on life.

I removed a bunch of wires. The camera sees them, but my eyes don't. Or my busy brain deletes them.

From the Canyonview Trail, a pair of eagles on a tree across the river.

And another eagle, a young adult, beside the highway on a low tree for once.

A Skywatch post.

Nursery

Life goes on ...

When a tree dies, it comes alive, more so than in its life.

Living trees are made up of about 5% living tissue, but when certain species die, they become literal garden beds of new life. These otherwise “dead” trees contain five times more living matter than when they were growing upright. (Garden Collage magazine)

And its useful life can extend as long as its "live" growth period. A 100-year-old tree dies; then it invites in a host of other organisms, and stands or lies there for another 100 years, gradually disintegrating. By the time it finally disappears, it may have nurtured a small forest of its own.

In any old stand of trees in our rainforest, we find nurse logs in different stages of decay and re-incarnation.

An old forest giant. I estimated it from a distance at about 2 - 3 metres diameter. Our Douglas firs have been known to reach up to 15 feet across.

This old stump supports several small trees, maple and fir, growing from the top, plus a few huckleberry bushes and a layer of moss. On its flanks, ferns, red-berry elder and salal have taken root, as well as the ever-present moss. 

The old stump lifts seedlings above the undergrowth into the light and retains a more consistent level of moisture, winter and summer, than the forest floor. In deep forest, they may provide almost the only suitable habitat for huckleberry bushes, which need air and light.

Look to the right; there's another old nurse log, mostly gone by now; the tree grown out of it has extended its roots over the edge and down into the soil. They will support the new tree on stilts even when the nurse has disappeared.

Another, much smaller, second- or third-growth stump supports three new trees. Their roots encase the old stump, by now too fragile to hold the weight on its own. Other residents: moss and a large colony of spiders.

Three more firs on a badly-decayed nurse log. The one in back is just getting started, with its top dressing of moss, where seeds will find the perfect planting bed, warm, moist, and sunlit.

For the birds

Snag, Kin Beach

I love dead trees.

The Watershed recycles

In a healthy forest, nothing stays the same; everything is in a state of flux. Sure, a tree may live for 60, 100, 500, even 1000 years, but it is never static. A tree is a community; a forest is a complete world of sprouting, hatching, growing, dying, and birthing living creatures. Everything is reused, reshaped, repurposed.

Take the Watershed Park:

Cedar grove, surrounded by fast-growing red alder, paper birch, and salmonberries.

These are third- and fourth-growth trees, youngsters, as trees go. Their ancestors are now the rotting remains of enormous stumps. And they are already self-selecting, the stronger, taller trees hogging the sunlight, crowding out the smaller ones. In this photo, there are skinny logs on the ground; birches and alders mainly. One dead tree still stands, leafless; three or four more are in the process of falling, tipped over but still alive.

Even the dead trees are alive.

Herb Robert sprouting in a compost of dead leaves and twigs, on a Big-leaf maple.

Canker or rot on an old birch, on its way down.

Split and hollowed maple, growing moss.

Heart rot, caused by various fungi, weakens the tree without necessarily killing it. Insects move in, looking for shelter or food; woodpeckers bore holes to feed on the bugs. Sometimes the tree splits, but sometimes it looks solid from the outside, but is completely hollow inside. Red cedar is good at this, and many small animals nest inside, dry and hidden from predators. The list of possible residents is long: squirrels and chipmunks, chickadees, nuthaches, owls and flickers, wood ducks (near water), mice and bats - many bats - and woodrats, woodpeckers of all sorts, and on and on. Even bears; a female bear likes to den high up in a big hollow cedar.

Insects. One word to cover thousands of critters to be found in any forest. In this visit, on a dry day, most were in hiding, but the traces of beetles and wood borers were evident on every tree and log. Broken pieces of bark, pulled away from a trunk, revealed a fine, brown dust, leftovers from many buggy meals. And of course, there were spiders. I found one I do not recognize, and will send my poor photo to the good people at BugGuide.

Black and gold spider, under bark.

I found a centipede, many ants, several millipedes (scooting out of sight in an instant), and eleventy-three woodbugs.

Under the bark of a fallen tree, something has eaten paths in the cambium. An insect larva, maybe? A slug?

Laurie says this is a bitter cherry log.

I noticed several of these logs. The old bark holds on, shredding but still keeping its shape while the wood inside crumbles to dust. Several of the logs were mostly a hollow bark tube.

BC natives used this bark for binding the joints of tools and the hafts of bows, because it is so tough and long-lasting. It is still used as a decorative accent on basket work.

In a well-rotted log, something blue, some sort of fungus infestation.

Insect larva tunnels in the heartwood of an old fallen tree.

In a small semi-clearing, we stood amazed. What is that?

Is that a man in the tree? Or a mermaid?

Zooming in. I think it's a blonde mermaid.

And the tree is a cedar. It looks like it broke off, many years ago, perhaps in a windstorm, and then sprouted side branches curving upwards to become four new trunks. Cedar branches droop down before they turn upwards again; these bare branches show the pattern well.

What a wealth of critters that tree must house!

Something green to rest our eyes. Moss on a rotten stump.

Singing tree

Among my old hopeless photos, I found this one:

Dead tree,  Chase Valley

I've kept this photo, first on paper, then scanned for the computer, for about 10 years. It was a poor photo; too dark, taken from too far away (but it was as close as we could get without gear), with a competing sky behind the tree. Even cleaned up now, it's not very clear. But it was "our" tree, with a story to tell.

We were staying in a friend's cabin in the hills near Chase, BC. We were basically shut in there; we had no phone, no internet, no neighbours; all around us was scrub bush and evergreen forest, innocent of humans for the most part. Our companions were nuthatches, chickadees, scrub jays and squirrels, hanging around because I was providing seeds and peanuts. There were beaver down by the creek, and we saw a few of those birds that run underwater, the dippers.

To go into town, we had to drive along the bottom of a narrow valley, on gravel roads for part of the way. The view: trees, trees, trees, and the occasional small farm on the bottom land along Chase Creek. I don't remember passing more than one or two cars in the entire time we were there.

Eventually, we would come to civilization; a miniature town hall, seemingly abandoned, a wooden bridge or two, a turn-off down Turtle Valley Road. (That one has a name on the map; our road doesn't.) Then a narrow ravine, a sharp curve, a bit of a slope downwards, and suddenly the world opened in front of us. This was the valley of the river that runs from Little Shuswap Lake, just around the corner, to Kamloops to the west. The fields were lush and bright green, glowing in the sunlight, the river like a mirror held up to the sky. Across the valley the hills started again, rising gradually, melting into a blue haze in the distance. We had to stop to look, often.

And there was the one lone tree, well down the side hill, but still towering overhead.

It was dead, long dead, but still bore life. Every time we stopped, the whole tree was singing and twittering. Sometimes, we saw tiny birds flitting from branch to branch, always dark shadows against the brightness of the sky. We never saw them up close; they remain unidentified. They never seemed to leave the tree; why would they? It was a never-ending source of goodies, bugs and seeds waiting for a forest fire to get them started growing, and free for the eating. No wonder the birds sang!

Eventually we'd tear ourselves away, down into town for groceries and hardware (Laurie was doing some construction work) and a stop at the second-hand book store; then back up that long hill, and we'd dive into the shade of the ravine and the creek valley until next time. The tree stood like a sentinel, watching us return, the birds still twittering madly.

The last time we stopped, to say goodbye for now (but it's been 10 years!) a hawk was perched in a tree above us on the hillside, watching the tree. Next link in the food chain, but I hoped he'd soon go elsewhere.

Is the tree still there? I can't be sure. On the Google satellite photo, there's a dark stain where I think it was. If that's it, I'm sure it's still twittering away.

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Next: I found a whole folder full of trees against the sky. I'll see how many I can rescue.