Dead Wood in the Landscape

A dead tree is just dead, right?  It must be time to get rid of it so that the woodland can stay healthy, right?

WRONG!  Dead trees, whether standing (called snags) or fallen (called downed wood or logs), are vitally important to woodland health and to biodiversity.  In fact, scientists believe that dead wood harbors more life than living wood does.  Dead wood is critical to the health of a forest, feeding the soil and a myriad of plants and animals.

How can that be true?  It's DEAD!  It seems counterintuitive, doesn't it?  Well, stop and think about it for a moment.....

As we all know, trees capture energy from the sun to make sugar, but they also pull up nutrients from deep within the soil, with the important help of extensive mycorrhizal networks.  All of these nutrients and energy are stored within the leaves and wood of the tree.  When the tree dies, that nutrition doesn't just disappear, it becomes a vital resource for other plants and for animals within the forest.

A slug inside a shelf fungus on a dead log.  The green
areas are lichen and, if you look closely, you can see
tiny holes where some animal has bored into the dead wood.
May 6, 2024

In fact, many, many species utilize dead wood for some or all of their life cycle.  Dead wood is full of organisms decomposing it and, in the process, working to extract the nutrition stored in it.  Fungi, lichens, mosses, microbes, beetle larvae, ants, termites, and more - all feeding on the nutrients in the dead wood and breaking it down in the process.

All of the decomposers then become food for other animals.  These animals, like woodpeckers and other birds, beetle larvae, centipedes, and parasitic wasps, find a cornucopia of food as they feed on the organisms that are feeding on the dead wood.

This Pileated Woodpecker spent over an hour foraging
on logs around our yard.  
April 26, 2023

A pair of Broad-headed Skinks took up housekeeping
in the decaying roots of the dead black gum tree.
May 16, 2023

Dead wood also forms important structural habitat for animals:  woodpeckers make their nest holes, then other animals utilize the nest holes when the woodpeckers move out.  Flying squirrels, screech owls, and raccoons all utilize cavities in trees as their home.  Little solitary bees utilize the old tunnels of wood-boring larvae and carpenter bees excavate  their own new tunnels in the dead wood.  In these tunnels, the bees lay their eggs, provisioned with nectar and pollen for the growth of their developing larvae.  Hollow trees are biodiversity central, harboring massive numbers of species.  Dead branches serve as perches from which flycatchers and bluebirds and hawks hunt.  

A squirrel sat on this stump, eating hickory nuts,
as evidenced by the debris left behind.
September 15, 2023

Even logs are often used as displaying and basking sites, as well as for protection during cold weather or drought.

As the dead wood decomposes, it forms humus in the soil which both feeds the soil and helps the soil to absorb and retain water, providing protection from drought conditions.

From the bottom left to the top right, there WAS a log, about 6" in diameter.
Within 3 years, it had decomposed to this soft woody "dust".
August 29, 2024

Downed wood will slow the flow of water off a landscape, helping rain be absorbed into the soil, decreasing floods and increasing groundwater storage, helping to keep the soil moist for the plants and animals living in it.

Last, but hardly least, one of the most undervalued benefits that trees provide is that they are important "carbon sinks", utilizing carbon dioxide during photosynthesis and storing the carbon in their wood and leaves as they grow.  That carbon stays in the wood after the tree dies and, as the wood decomposes slowly, much of it will become held as organic material in the soil for even longer.  Soil can hold a tremendous amount of carbon and I've seen estimates that a full third of the carbon that we need to remove from the atmosphere to solve the climate crisis could be stored in soils in the form of humus or organic material.

How much carbon does a tree store?  Dry wood is about 45-50% carbon, depending on the species of tree.  One unit of carbon (a pound, for example), if completely converted to carbon dioxide, will produce 3.67 units (pounds, in our example) of carbon dioxide.  So, to estimate, one pound of dry wood is storing 1.8 pounds of carbon dioxide in its tissues.

So, do we have dead wood in our yard?  Absolutely.

This is the remnant trunk of the dead black gum tree,
cut off about 20' above the ground.
Note the living Pileated Woodpecker below
the iron silhouette of a pileated above.
April 26, 2023

About a year after we moved in, I had our trees trimmed for safety purposes.   I asked the arborist's crew to leave larger branches for me, which they very kindly did.  Our yard also contained a dead black gum tree.  It was tall enough that it could do some damage if it fell in the wrong direction, so I had the crew cut it off about 20' above the ground, leaving the lower part of the trunk standing for woodpeckers and other animals to use.  

With the truncated, dead black gum trunk rising behind one grandson,
both play on the newly cut trunk sections we left.
January 26, 2022

Then, instead of having the arborist's crew haul off all the rest of the wood, I had them cut the trunk into logs and used as many of those logs around the yard as I could:  as an end table between 2 Adirondack chairs, as an obstacle course for the grandsons to play on, as occasional places for me to sit during a walkabout, as a decorative element in a flower bed.  I also had them leave a 20' section of the upper trunk as a landscape feature just to let it rot in place.

A trail, lined with downed branches, 
that leads out into the wild area of the front yard.
June 1, 2024

Another section of trail lined with downed branches.
In this photo, you can see the remaining stump
from the dead black gum tree that I talk about below.
June 1, 2024

The larger branches that the arborist's crew trimmed off were cut into sections that I used to start outlining garden beds and paths.

Two years after the dead black gum trunk was cut back and left standing, it did fall, due to rot in its roots and in the base of the tree.  Because I'd had the trunk cut back to 20' tall, it did no damage...although it was a little inconvenient since it landed in our driveway.  We pushed it out of the way so that we could use the driveway, then got a crew to take much of it away.  On 2/3 acre, there's unfortunately only so much dead wood that I can comfortably keep.  

"After the fall". We were able to roll the log section off the driveway
until we could hire someone to cut and remove the wood.
August 11, 2023

A closer look at the remaining stump and hollowed out lower trunk
of the dead black gum tree.
August 11, 2023

I did keep the stump and a broken 3' section that was partially rotted away.

Not long after the truncated and dead black gum tree fell, we decided that we had to take down a large, beautiful southern red oak tree that was leaning too strongly towards the neighbor's house.  It was right beside the driveway and there was/is rot in it from where the driveway has impinged upon it.  I really hated having to make that decision, but I couldn't have lived with myself if the tree had fallen on my neighbor's home, so it had to come down.  Before the tree crew came, I measured how far it was to the nearby electric pole and, instead of cutting the tree down completely, I had it topped at 20' as we'd done with the dead black gum.

I have no photo of that tree because it's still too painful that we felt we had to cut it down.

If I were an artist, I'd try to carve a face into the remaining trunk of the red oak.   Since I'm not, I simply mounted 2 iron silhouettes on it:  an owl and a pileated woodpecker.  I suspect that the trunk will be there for a long time, slowly decomposing and feeding untold animals as it does.

In How to Love a Forest, forester Ethan Tapper wrote, "In a world in which a dead tree may contain four times the biomass that it held in life, I will watch the aspen's humming cavities, wondering what it means for a tree to be alive." (p. 89)

I am continually amazed at how much life is harbored in dead wood.  Since this post is lengthy enough already, I'll stop here, but in my next post I'm going to share some of the species that we're seeing in our yard BECAUSE we have left the dead wood whenever we can.  I hope you'll consider leaving some of the dead wood in your yard or garden, too. 

Kids in Nature

Richard Louv's important book, Last Child in the Woods, was written in 2008 and brought attention to the reality that few children actually get to spend much time playing freely outdoors.   It sparked a subset of parents and other adults who have been trying to encourage families to get their kids outdoors in nature.  Unfortunately, it's seemed (from the outside, at least) like a bit of a slog, fighting through the mud that is the way our society is currently set up - barren yards full of chemicalized lawn and non-native plants, schedules jammed with activities that require all of our highly scheduled time and attention, parks given over to sports' fields rather than natural areas, and a general distrust of free time as "unproductive", the ultimate sin in the U.S.

When I was in elementary school, I spent days...weeks... months exploring the woods and creek near our home in College Park, Maryland.  There were tadpoles and crayfish to try to catch, minnows and frogs to watch, and many, many special places where my imagination could run wild.  The holly glade magically hid me, the tiny islands became my kingdoms, the paths (deer?) became trails leading me to new lands.....  When we moved to Massachusetts, I continued playing in the woods but I was getting a bit older.  Now I had a favorite log on a hillside overlooking a pond where my best friend and I would go after school to talk and just generally try to figure out life.  I led a band of neighborhood kids in catching toads and keeping them, naming them and "training" them to race in sandbox toad races such as high jump, long jump, and speed or distance trials.  (What can I say?  I knew I'd never have a horse;  maybe this was scratching that itch!)

In junior high, in the Panama Canal Zone, I tried my hand at gardening (I was awful at it) and explored the sea shore as much as I could, bringing home hermit crabs and other sea creatures to form my own attempt at a personal zoo.  Sadly, coming home with me was generally a death sentence for the poor animals, but I tried my best to provide good habitat and food for them.  Gerald Durrell's My Family and Other Animals, which my maternal uncle had introduced to me, was one of my favorite books - and a real inspiration.  More mundanely, I collected shells, too.  A lot of shells, which I carefully worked to identify and which I housed in cigar boxes, grouped by "type": moon shells, pen shells, scallops, whelks, cowries, etc.  I wanted so badly to be a marine biologist...but our next move was to Kansas and I didn't know any marine biologists.  How did you actually make a living as a marine biologist?  My courage and my imagination failed me in figuring out how to step in that direction, and life soon led me in other directions.

All of this is to say that playing outside, freely and with little oversight, was incredibly important to me and was influential in forming the person I became.  Greg and I were able to give our kids a taste of that freedom in the natural world, too, when they were in late elementary and middle school.

And now we're trying to give the gift of free play in nature to our grandsons as well.

It's a goal that seems to get harder with each generation.  If my parents worried about where I was while I was gone for most of each day, playing in the woods, I was unaware of it, and the wild area was right down the street from where we lived.  I walked there.  When our kids were playing outdoors, we lived in farm country and they were able to ramble through a wooded draw behind our house and through a neighbor's cow pasture.

Where do kids play now?  There are few natural areas left where they can roam and wander at will.  There's so much fear about "danger" that parents actually get prosecuted for letting their children roam freely.  (Or, at least, that's the story we're told.)

So I'm working to make our personal landscape an interesting natural area for our grandsons to explore and play in.  I've come across a wonderful book by Nancy Striniste, Nature Play at Home, which has a plethora of great ideas for changing your yard from bland to fascinating.   I highly recommend it if the topic interests you at all.

When dead wood was trimmed out of our trees last month, I had the tree service leave the major branches and trunks.  One of the things I've done with that dead wood is create play areas for the boys in our yard.

Good habitat for people AND animals.

Even their dad has gotten in on the action!

Bare feet are the norm for the boys, not the exception.  In fact, it's hard now to get them to wear shoes, even in cold weather.  Talk about "grounding"!

And imaginations run wild.

My heart truly swelled with happiness and pride the day that the boys came outside, on their own, with notebooks, guidebooks, binoculars, and pencils to "study nature".

They are not always successful in their endeavors - patience was not their strong suit as Connor tried to entice birds to eat out of his hand.  But that's part of the learning.

Even meal times have an element of outside nature for all of us, as we watch our bird feeders from the table on the back porch.  The boys have become excellent birders.  For example, it was our older grandson who first noticed the immature male Baltimore oriole feeding on the bark butter feeder a few weeks ago.  I'm not sure I wouldn't have quickly glanced at the bird and dismissed it as the pine warbler that had been frequently visiting.  I never expected a Baltimore oriole in January!

In other interactions with animals, we and the boys watch fireflies at night in the summer - last summer we noticed 3 different waves of them: one in April, one in mid summer, and one in early fall.  The April fireflies seem to stay 30' or more above the ground.  I've even found the firefly larvae occasionally as I weed.  

We planted around 30 swamp milkweed last spring and we watched for monarch caterpillars all summer long;  we did find a few and we're hoping for more next summer.  Our plants are still young.  We've found large numbers of black swallowtail caterpillars on parsley, enough that we've had to hit the grocery store for organic parsley when the hungry hordes decimated the plants they were on.

Late this summer, a box turtle wandered through the front yard - the first one I've seen in our yard in 2 years.  We see skinks and a few baby toads.  The boys haven't shown any interest in toad races yet, though! 

I hope we're building happy memories for them, strongly grounded in the natural world, that will last the boys for a lifetime.  Most importantly, I hope we're helping to create a new generation that cares enough about the Earth to help care for it in the future.