Unlike animals, which can move away from bad weather, trees have to stick around for whatever weather comes their way. Fortunately, they have plenty of strategies to deal with harsh weather.
Welcome to this week's edition of Something Wild. I'm Rosemary Conroy for the Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests.
Whoever decided that this was the time of year to give thanks was pretty smart. If things are going well you have oil in your tank, or wood stacked in your shed, food in the pantry, and, I hope, time to stop and ponder.
Shedding leaves helps trees like these handle heavy New England snowfall. (Nathan Chervek, NHPR)
I often think about trees at this time of year. Unlike the animals that have either migrated, gone underground or begun hibernating, trees have to endure everything that the weather throws at them.
Of course, they can handle it - trees have many ingenious strategies. For example, by now most of our hardwoods have shed their leaves. Obvious, I know, but it seems rather extravagant to put so much energy into creating something that you're just going to drop every fall.
But the leaves have it covered, so to speak. If all went well, they've now converted enough sunlight into food to grow more of themselves next spring. And if things went really well, there's extra to handle the occasional drought or flood or insect outbreak.
Besides, you don't want to be a maple tree full of leaves once the snow flies. Just look what happened in western New York during the freak blizzard they had in October this year. Two feet of snow topples a leafed-out tree, whereas bare branches could have handled it just fine.
Conifers take a different, more conservative approach, of course. The narrow shape of their needles sheds snow quite well, so they can hold onto them year round. Those waxy needles help conserve moisture, too - very important if you're going to live in the cold, dry air at those higher altitudes. Plus, being evergreen means that you can get a jump on the shorter growing season come spring.
It's comforting to know that, most of the time anyway, trees can handle whatever the weather throws at them quite well. It's something to be downright grateful for!
Something Wild is a joint production of New Hampshire Audubon, NHPR and the Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests. For Something Wild, I'm Rosemary Conroy.
