The Wild Side of Urban Forestry
I recently gave a tree walk through New Haven. During the walk, I wanted to introduce the participants to what might be called the “wild side of urban forestry”. By that, I am not referencing those patches in urban areas that hold remnants of former woods and fields – those echoes of what once was here, islets of a wild or semi-wild past. Those places are also interesting, but they are not what I am talking about.
Rather, my perspective more has to do with those areas places where plants and especially trees confront this newly created habitat, made by humans over the past 200 years. I am looking at places such as the backs of parking lots, the side cuts alongside railroad tracks, abandoned backyards and overlooked fence lines – the places where plants take it upon themselves to seed in, adapt, survive and grow. Primary succession, I suppose, of a sort that takes advantage of a new sort of ecological landscape. The beginning, perhaps, of a type of native urban forest, even though one not necessarily made up of native trees.
The concept of being native looms large in my thinking here. Many of the trees that can be observed here – ailanthus, black locust and even Japanese scholar tree among them – are not considered as being native in ordinary terminology. At the same time, the question must also be asked, as to whether the landscape to which they are adapting and in which they are growing is itself in anyway native?
If this landscape is not itself native and if these trees are demonstrating an innate ability to thrive in such unnatural conditions, shouldn’t that be given consideration? After all, isn’t a growing, green tree better than bare asphalt or concrete?
But I have slipped into value judgments – what I really want to focus attention on is the wildness of these trees and the audacity of what it is that they are doing. It is a new world for them, as it is a new world for us. We should look at this world and these plants and appreciate what we see first for what is happening here first. Our value decisions can come later – as they always seem to do.
