Tree Tubes on American Chestnut Trees

Tree tubes are finally fulfilling their promise as an establishment aid for American chestnut seedlings.

If ever there was a perfect candidate tree for tree tubes it would seem to be the American chestnut tree.  Billions of majestic chestnut trees were wiped out by the fungal blight that swept through its range in the early- and mid-1900s.  It has been the focus of heroic re-establishment efforts on the part of organizations such as the American Chestnut Foundation and thousands of dedicated scientists and volunteers.  Every chestnut seed or seedling planted is rare & precious, and critical to the long-term success of re-establishment efforts.  But chestnuts are also extremely vulnerable to all of threats to successful regeneration that other species face, including deer browse, competing vegetation and periodic drought stress.

So given the value and importance of each and every chestnut seedling planted and the number of threats they face, one would think that using plastic tree tubes on American chestnuts would be a no-brainer... and indeed American chestnut enthusiasts were some of the first tree planters to recognize the potential benefits of tree tubes and give them a try.  Unfortunately, the performance of those early, unvented tree tubes on American chestnut seedlings left a great deal to be desired.

It turned out that chestnut seedlings grown in tree tubes were particularly vulnerable to winter injury and die back.  They also grew with elongated, spindly stems that often formed a spiraling or helix growth habit as they worked their way up the tree tube.  Word of these issues quickly spread in chestnut growing circles, and chestnut planters either switched to using 2ft or 3ft tree tubes (shorter tree tubes provided rodent protection but did not cause die back or spiraling growth) or stopped using tree tubes altogether.

Growers of Chinese chestnut trees, incidentally, experienced and reported these same problems, and many became disillusioned with tree tubes.

Recently, however, chestnut planters - both of American and Chinese chestnuts - have recognized the major advancements in tree tube design - most notably the addition of ventilation, better light transmission properties and larger tube diameter - and have given them another try.  This time around the results have been outstanding.

In this blog I have often discussed the evolution of tree tubes as the story of two eras:  Before Venting (BV) and After Venting (AV).  The entire history of tree tube use and effectiveness in North America can be divided into these two categories; the un-vented tree tubes that first came over from the UK and worked well in their moderate and very forgiving climate, and the vented tree tubes that work in the extreme climates - both cold and hot - found in the United States.  Nowhere is this dichotomy of BV versus AV illustrated more starkly and dramatically than with American and Chinese chestnut trees.

In coming weeks we will be posting accounts and photographs of tree tubes on American chestnut and Chinese chestnut trees.  Healthy, rapid growth and straight trunks have been the rule, as you see in dramatic fashion here:

(Click to enlarge)

This is a Chinese chestnut tree growing in Mississippi.  It was planted in July, 2012 as a 12 inch seedling.  It was protected with a 4ft tall tree tube, and was watered to help it survive the late season planting.  It didn't put on any additional growth for the remainder of the 2012 season.... in other words in entered the 2013 growing season 1 foot tall.  This photograph was taken in August, 2013.  The tree grew more than 8 feet in one growing season.

More important than the rapid rate of growth:

1) The tree - and many others like it in the same planting - is perfectly straight, with no sign of the spiraling growth seen in the early days of chestnut seedlings in un-vented tree tubes.

2)  The trunk diameter - while thin relative to it (amazing) height, as you'd expect with any tree tube grown seedling - is very robust.  This also due in large part to the adoption of flexible tree tube stakes such as 1/2" schedule 40 PVC, as was used here.

Note: That "tray" at the base of the tree is a revolutionary weed mat developed in Israel called the IrriPan Weed Mat.  It blocks weeds, captures rain water and funnels it to the tree, reflects light up to the tree, and recycles soil moisture.

Follow this blog for more upcoming posts chronicling the use of tree tubes on American and Chinese chestnut trees.

Tree Tubes for Planting Landscape Trees

Dr. Doug McCreary is the guru of oak regeneration in California.  Some years ago he spent his sabbatical in England, learning about English practices for growing, planting and protecting oaks.

One of his reports is here.

Bottom line:  We in the USA can learn an awful lot about successful and cost effective establishment of landscape and roadside trees.

Corollary:  Seedling trees in tree tubes 1) cost many times less, 2) survive at a higher rate, 3) grow faster and 4) live longer than what we currently do (planting large potted or B&B trees that cost hundreds of dollars, have deformed root systems, suffer years of transplant shock, grow slowly, and succumb to disease, insects and root strangulation).

Some key points from Dr. McCreary's report from the UK:

"When driving around the English countryside, one notices that treeshelters (tree tubes) are everywhere... Some estimates are that between three and five million treeshelters are sold annually in this country that is half the size of California."

"Even though the sight of treeshelter forests is not the most aesthetically pleasing - and I suspect some environmental groups might prefer to see them banned from the planet forever - they seem incredibly effective for reforestation in England (emphasis mine)."

We'll be looking at this issue of the aesthetics of tree tubes in a post later this week.  Not surprisingly I find a field with tree tubes in it for a few years to successfully establish trees that will live another 100 years much more aesthetically pleasing than a failed planting.

"While stuck in traffic, I tried to determine how many (tree) shelters in a roadside planting had surviving plants inside... a 'windshield assessment' indicated that over 90% of the trees were growing out of the tops of the tubes.  This is consistent with a large-scale survey here several years ago of over 4,000 (tree) shelters on 192 sites where 89% contained a living tree."

"Clearly the success rate seems far higher than for roadside plantings along California highways.  The fact that England has much more summer rainfall probably contributes greatly to excellent seedling growth and survival, but I suspect that (tree) shelters here are more carefully and properly installed and maintained... Whatever the English do, it works, and we have much to learn from their many years of experience with these devices (tree tubes) that, so far, seem particularly useful for regenerating oaks in California as well (emphasis mine)."