Photos Of The Week~ Purple-leaf European Birch
In the spring of 2000 I planted a purple-leaf European Birch in my Bethesda back yard, within an existing stand of mature native oaks, tulip poplars and pignut hickory. This was not a wise choice as it would ultimately become too big for the quarter-acre lot and it would have been better for my backyard environment to just encourage some of the seedlings of the existing trees to grow up. (Which is what I did with several oak seedlings in later years.) But I thought they were cool, and when we had some at Behnke’s I bought one and planted it.
It grew slowly and by 2021 it was looking pretty nice and filled a need for understory plants in the back yard. In late May of 2021 I had a “now what?” moment as I discovered that large swatches of bark had been gnawed off of the beech tree trunk. Since sap moves up and down right under the bark, this girdled one side of the tree and several of the branches. It would definitely weaken the tree, and might eventually kill it. I knew it wasn’t beavers, since it was about 6 feet up on the tree, so squirrels were the suspect. Squirrels that were being very gnawty.
I sent a photo of the damage to Stanton Gill at UMD Extension, and he confirmed that it was squirrels, and that they will occasionally chew on thin-barked trees, possibly for some missing nutrient in their diet, like calcium. Had I known, maybe I could have just designed and set out out a Tums Feeder. (That is not an Extension recommendation, just me musing.)
The tree seemed none the worse for wear that summer. Later that year we sold the house and moved to Wisconsin. Not because I was devasted by the beech tree massacre, but to be closer to family. I haven’t been back to the house (except for a quick drive-by last year), so I don’t know how it’s faring. This sort of damage is very sporadic. If I had stayed in the house, I would probably have put some sort of wire mesh screening on in the winter to protect the remaining bark, removing it in late spring, but it may be a case where resistance is futile.
Ughh, something else to worry about. I had male deer rub off bark of young trees like japanese maples, and break magnolia sapling trunks during rutting season. I guess the tree guards for rutting may deter squirrels?
Interesting post. I didn’t realize that squirrels would be such a pest —. Eating the bark of healthy trees.
Richard