Update about blogCa

Who knew all this would happen afterwards! Flat Creek in November, 2024. Much changed by the force of the hurricane floods in Sept. 2024. The deck of the bridge is now under that pile of debris.

Saturday, August 1, 2020

Dying trees and old buildings

At the very back of the Monte Vista Hotel, an old established (and refurbished) edifice of Black Mountain...stand these three majestic evergreen trees.  I wonder if they were standing when the hotel was built in 1937.

They are tall. They are sick. All across the woods in North Carolina, the wooly adelgid has been killing the hemlocks and spruces.  I wonder how long these trees will be standing.

The hemlock woolly adelgid (/əˈdɛl.ɪd/;[1] Adelges tsugae), or HWA, is an insect of the order Hemiptera (true bugs) native to East Asia. It feeds by sucking sap from hemlock and spruce trees (Tsuga spp.; Picea spp.) ...In eastern North America it is a destructive pest that threatens the eastern hemlock (Tsuga canadensis) and the Carolina hemlock (Tsuga caroliniana).  SOURCE: Wikipedia

Visiting Mt. Mitchell, I noted much the same sad state of many majestic trees...though the State Park says a lot of the damage is due to acid rain.




The Monte Vista today...with more of those wonderful tall evergreen trees around it.

Tucking this into Sepia Saturday...which shows a nice old grocery from way back when...1944.


18 comments:

  1. ...the wooly adelgid is nasty. When I was in the nursery business I bought lots of hemlock from NC!

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    1. It's sad to be seeing a population of trees in decline, much as it must have been when the Chestnuts started dying.

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  2. Hello,
    It is sad to see these tall old trees die, we had some hemlock die here too. Take care, enjoy your weekend!

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    1. Yes, definitely sad. Have a great weekend...I anticipate some new photos from a walk or two that you take.

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  3. There is a hotel in the prompt photo too. Even dead or dying, those old evergreens have a beautiful shape.

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    1. I do enjoy seeing them when they still are green.

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  4. Such a bummer about that invasive species. It is sad to see trees die off like that.

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  5. It took me a moment to figure out the "tuck" into the prompt pic' till I remembered the hotel marquee. Clever! The only other thing I could figure out (I sometimes think in weird ways) was the dead trees could tie into the telephone poles which were once live trees? ;)

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  6. Replies
    1. Yes, and when you're hiking it isn't as noticeable...thanks to park people probably removing some of the deadfall.

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  7. So discouraging to hear there is something killing the trees.

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  8. Here, Gypsy Moths seem to be doing damage.

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  9. Woolly adelgid is indeed a threat to the majestic Eastern hemlock, and you have written a moving blog that highlights the problem. Fortunately, the Western hemlock appears to be immune to the pest and arborists are hard at work trying to figure out a hybrid or some other way of saving these stately conifers.

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  10. Earlier this spring I noticed the increasing loss of trees in our mountains. The swathes of gray hemlock branches made an ugly contrast to the green leaves on other trees. Some places where large numbers of dead trees have fallen will likely take many decades to recover. But a century ago the great chestnuts succumbed to a similar blight and the forest we see now are its replacement trees.

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There is today, more than ever, the need for a compassionate regenerative world civilization.