Seven Cedar Rapids Trees May be Tops in Iowa
By Rick Smith
The Gazette
rick.smith@gazettecommunications.com
July 2, 2009 - Cedar Rapids' just-completed championship tree contest may provide Sherrie Nelsen her greatest defense against the frightful march of the ash-tree-killing emerald ash borer.
The towering black ash in Nelsen’s backyard at 1612 Maplewood Dr. NE is the city’s champion tree of its species and, according to a preliminary comparison with the Iowa Department of Natural Resources champion tree list, ranks as the state’s champion black ash, too.
The city’s contest also has identified six other Cedar Rapids champion trees — Amur corktree, arborvitae, Ponderosa pine, red pine, American Larch and scarlet red oak — that appear to top Iowa’s list of champion trees for their species, reports City Arborist Daniel Gibbins. He says another 23 of 77 contest entries rank in the state’s top 10 of their species.
As for Nelsen’s black ash, Gibbins suggests that there could be no better time for an ash tree to achieve such championship standing.
A champion ash, he says, surely will bring the city, state, private tree-care companies and tree lovers to the rescue should, or rather when, the emerald ash borer arrives here. The borer, native to Asia, has decimated tens of millions of ashes in at least 13 states, and now has leapt across the Mississippi River into Minnesota and likely into far northeast Iowa.
Private tree companies, Gibbins says, love to adopt champion trees and do what they can to save them any time a pest or disease threatens the trees. A value of the city’s tree contest, he adds, is that the city now has a catalog of local champions so it can move any time a particular tree species is facing a threat.
Nelsen, who has beat back cancer in her own life and who dispatches for her father’s Nelsen Trucking Co., was showing off her champion ash tree Thursday morning with 10-year-old son Broder. And she knew all about the ash borer threat. She had read up on pesticides that can be used to try and save individual ash trees, and she knew that the smaller the tree the better the chance that the tree’s vascular system could get the pesticide protection to the tree’s top.
Giants like Nelsen’s ash tree do face much greater risk from the emerald ash borer, Gibbins confirms, and he says the best approach is to keep the tree as healthy as possible.
Nelsen’s tree appeared to be thriving on Thursday along with four other skyscraper-like trees in her backyard, all of which seemed like they could contend for champion status. She, though, decided to nominate just the one black ash.
“My mom’s always been really proud of that tree,” says son Broder.
Young volunteers trained by Trees Forever of Marion, which has helped the city on the contest, measured the tree to come up with a point score based on height, girth and crown spread. Nelsen’s black ash is 146 feet tall - the tallest of all the trees in the city’s competition.
The city’s Gibbins, who moved from Missouri to join the city’s public works staff in January, says his counterparts across Iowa have been quick to tell him of the city’s “rich history of loving trees, planting trees and trying to maintain the healthiest tree canopy possible.”
This year, Gibbins’ city department will plant about 1,100 trees along city streets and in parks.
Storms, though, will take down some trees, too, and he says some of those will be some of the city’s oldest, most stately trees.
Nelsen figures her own piece of neighborhood next to Mount Mercy College has lost at least 10 giant trees in the last five or so years to storms and age.
“A lot of us can tie so many good memories in our childhood back to just enormous trees,” says the city’s Gibbins. “So the fact that trees may be coming down to the last few decades of their life is kind of sad.
“… But I think that also leads to the desire to plant more trees because we know we’re definitely planting for the future. We plant for our lives, but we also plant for the generations to come.”
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