Tree Care Notes
Being a vocal anti-lawn person, I’m completely biased on the topics of leaf raking, leaf composting, and yard waste management. I feel our yards need fewer synthetic inputs and a lot more native inputs, in the form of leaf litter.
Every fall I am shocked, aghast and pinching myself to see all the people piling free fertilizer (that’s what I call it) at the curb. I take my neighbor’s leaves and pile them in my yard!
As its name implies, the swamp white oak is a lowland tree, often found in areas subject to periodic flooding, and on the edges of swamps and poorly drained meadows. Unlike white oaks (Q. alba) and burr oaks (Q. macrocarpa), which occur in large stands in the forests and oak savannahs of the Midwest, swamp white oaks are usually found growing singly amongst forests dominated by other species.
Carpinus caroliniana goes by many names: musclewood, American hornbeam, water beech, blue beech, and ironwood (not to be confused with a different ironwood that we also offer). When you’re strolling through Wisconsin woodlands and you come upon this tree, the name most likely to come to mind is “musclewood” because the smooth, ridged trunk resembles the musculature of a sinewy action movie hero.
