What's Growing on My Tree?

Lou Meyer, business developer for Davey's mid-Atlantic region, and Rob Dallmann from Davey's Chesapeake, Maryland, office talk about how to spot what's growing on your tree and if it's safe for the tree or harmful.

In this episode we cover:

• Lichen (0:55) (17:28)
• Moss (6:33)
• Fungus (8:39)
• Hypoxylon canker (9:52)
• Shelf mushrooms (12:51)
• Lou's and Rob's jobs (14:07)
• Employee ownership at Davey (18:28)

To find your local Davey office, check out our find a local office page to search by zip code.

To learn more about lichen, read our blogs, What's this Green Stuff Growing on Trees and Rocks?
To learn more about how to get rid of lichen and moss, read our blog, Can I Use a Pressure Washer to Clean or Spray Trees?

Connect with Davey Tree on social media:
Twitter: @DaveyTree
Facebook: @DaveyTree
Instagram: @daveytree
YouTube: The Davey Tree Expert Company
LinkedIn: The Davey Tree Expert Company

Have topics you'd like us to cover on the podcast? Email us at podcasts@davey.com. We want to hear from you!

Transcript

Doug Oster: Welcome to the Davey Tree Expert Companies podcast, Talking Trees. I'm your host, Doug Oster. Each week, our expert arborists share advice on seasonal tree care, how to make your trees thrive, arborists' favorite trees, and much, much more. Tune in every Thursday to learn more because here, at the Talking Trees podcast, we know trees are the answer. This week the topic is so important. I've got two guests. Lou Meyer who has been on the show many times, is original business developer in the Maryland and Washington DC area for the Davey Tree Expert Company, and Rob Dallmann is a district manager in the Chesapeake office for Davey. How we doing guys?

Lou Meyer: We're doing great. It's a beautiful day in Maryland. The sun is shining. The grass is green.

Rob Dallmann: Yes, sir. Excellent. Thank you for having us. Great to be here.

Doug: We are talking about what's growing on my tree. I think the number 1 question you guys get is, what is this green stuff that looks so scary on my tree?

Lou: Yes, we get that question all the time. Rob, do you want to field that one or do you want me to start?

Rob: Sure. Yes, I'll start. I mean, it's not always green. I'm looking at a maple tree across the parking lot here and it's got yellow lichen on it, and that's one of the most common epiphytes that people see on their trees, at least in our area. I was down in Florida over the winter and they've got some hanging mosses. Of course, depending on where you're from you may have Spanish moss if you're from the south, but yes, there's a variety of mosses and lichens and things that we call epiphytes that live on the bark and in the crevices of trees.

Lou: Yes, and lichens are really interesting. Lichens are possibly the original symbiotic relationship. They're actually two organisms, fungi and algae that have teamed together. The algae photosynthesizes to create the food, and the fungi gives the algae structure to hold onto, so they both support each other in that way. Pound for pound, it's the most abundant life form on the planet. You can find lichen on trees, you could find it on cemetery headstones, on coastal stones, it grows on metal sometimes, it's everywhere, and it's very important.

Rob: Actually, I read recently on stones that over a very long period of time, it will help to create soil, and that nitrogen fixing that Lou was talking about that can actually be from a bacteria or a fungi living with the algae in the lichen is part of the building blocks of living soil that creates ecosystems.

Doug: If it is on my tree, should I be concerned?

Lou: Yes, that's the question we get the most, and the answer is absolutely not, not because of the lichen. Lichen itself and algae and moss, they don't have roots. They don't dig into it. Moss is a nonvascular plant with no roots. They're just there for support. Now, if you see a lot of lichen on your tree, it could be a sign of other issues. People generally see a lot of lichen on a tree and they say, "Oh, the tree's failing because of the lichen."

You see more lichen on trees that are failing because it needs sunshine, and when the canopy of a tree is in trouble and it is not as thick as it should be, when it's a sparse canopy, more sunlight is hitting that trunk allowing for a more positive living space for that lichen, so it flourishes. It's easy to make that correlation. "Oh, there's a lot of lichen, it must be killing my tree." No, what's killing your tree is allowing more lichen to grow there. Also, you see it more on older trees which generally have more issues.

The reason why you see it on older trees is because they generally have more fissured trunks, so the trunk isn't that smooth bark of the young tree, and that allows more pore space for the lichen to grab onto that tree and hold onto it.

Rob: There's also an association with moisture levels. Again, on a dying tree that has decaying sections, there's going to be more moisture soaking in available, of course, with a sparse canopy, you get more rain water on a tree. That's also why older trees, they've been there for a longer period of time, the lichen or mosses have had more time to develop and they're absorbing or taking more rainwater and directing it down to the trunk of the tree. I don't know whether it's confirmed by empirical studies, but as the water is funneled down the tree, like I said, the lichen are nitrogen fixers and moss as well.

There's some dynamics going on there with the mineral nutrients and essential oils that they're producing, so one of the things that I've read is that as that water is directed down the trunk of the tree in that funnel effect right to the base of the tree where the most absorptive area, where the most roots abound, the rainwater is absorbing micronutrients and essential oils from the lichen and the moss which then gets right into the base of the tree right into that fibrous root area.

Doug: Is the nitrogen fixing, is that what the symbiotic thing is? [crosstalk]

Rob: Well, the lichen itself is a symbiotic organism. Like Lou said, it's either a fungi with algae or a bacteria with algae. It is symbiotic in and of itself. Then I would say in that case between the tree and the lichen, the lichen obviously is living on the tree. If it's true that it's giving back these micronutrients, then yes, that would be at the very least a mutually beneficial relationship if not completely symbiotic.

Doug: Interesting. Rob, you mentioned moss. Now, if I see moss on my tree what does that mean? Is it always on the north side?

Rob: It's definitely not always on the north side. That was going to be the first thing that I said. It's more closely associated with the north side because of the sunlight and moisture levels. Those areas are going to be more shady and are going to be moisture because of the shade, so that's where a more beneficial area for the moss to grow. I think you had asked about whether moss growing on the tree is associated with anything negative. There's some people that have said that it is.

In my opinion and in our general understanding is that it's really just there mostly for its own benefit. There might be some correlation between moss with the micronutrients and essential oils, just benefiting the tree by being there. Not really intentionally necessarily, but just by their presence.

Doug: When people ask me how they get rid of their moss, and I tell them, "Don't, love your moss." I'm saying the right thing?

Rob: Yes, I primarily hear that question about people with their lawns, and that's usually associated with trees again, because of the shady and moist environments, but as far as trees go, I am generally not concerned about it at all. Again, like what Lou said, it might be something that we look for as a corollary factor or secondary factor where if the tree has been damaged or is in decline, then we have to address that, but we typically don't address the moss at all. It's also a part of the environment, the ecosystem, and all that whole web of things that come with the natural world.

Doug: Lou, when you think about the question, what's growing in my tree what else are customers concerned about or things that you see out there?

Lou: Yes. They're going to see things like fungus, and when you see fungus growing on a tree, that's usually a little more serious of an issue. Most of the fungi that you see, and these aren't toadstool mushrooms coming out of the ground like Mario Brothers. These are conks or shelf fungi growing out of the side of the tree. Those are saprophytic which means that they feed on decay. The mushrooms themselves, the hyphae that are in the tree, they're not necessarily killing the tree, but they're feeding on that decay inside of the tree.

There are fungi that do kill trees. Canker fungi comes immediately to mind, so Hypoxylon canker is killing a lot of oak trees. Those are fungi that get into the vascular system of the tree and feed on the sugars, but by and large, the ones that you see on the side of the tree or coming out of the root base of the tree, those are signs of internal decay and real red flags for us in the industry.

Doug: You had to bring up canker, didn't you, Lou? I have a big oak right over my garage and my local arborist from Davey, he looked up and he said, "Did that thing leaf out last year?" I said, "I think so." He came and looked at it this year, "It's got to go."

Lou: Hypoxylon canker is a fast-moving disease, it's everywhere. It's part of the particulars that we breathe on a daily basis, trees have health systems, so they try and fight it off. If a tree's health system is in decline, and this is the same for almost most diseases or pests out there. The trees if they're affected because of draught or overwatering, or undernourishment or variety of other reasons, that's when opportunistic pests and diseases like Hypoxylon really take hold and take out the tree. Your next question is probably going to be, "How do I fix that?" Is healthy trees fight off those diseases easier.

Doug: Oh, I know how I'm going to fix it. Davey is going to come with a bucket truck and cut down that giant oak tree. Then it'll be fixed.

Lou: Exactly, it's at that point, it's far too gone to really fix, but to prevent it, plant health care. Fertilization, proper watering, proper feeding, mulching, and the rest.

Rob: And also, something that I'm very passionate about that we see all the time, it goes back to the beginning. Either a young tree that's planted properly or whenever construction, if it's a newer development. As arborists, what we're dealing with is trees in typically urban settings. Arboriculture almost always is urban-forestry. These are trees usually on islands, they're in parking lots, they're next to houses. You put the new pool in, you install the playground, the shed.

Very common thing that we're seeing more popularly now is ziplines, or I have a friend, he lives down in Virginia, he installed a climbing system into his beech tree and drilled right into the tree. I had to educate him, trees are wood, and before they're wood, before they're made into lumber, they have a living vascular system. Anytime you're drilling into it, bumping the base, destroying the root system, that's going to allow for these pathogens and diseases to get in there and do their work, which really, Hypoxylon canker with oak tree, oak decline.

In our area in the Mid-Atlantic, we're seeing Hypoxylon canker and two-lined chestnut borer or ambrosia beetles, those things really are there to recycle a dying tree to put it back into the forest system, into the soil system to be food for the next generation of trees.

Doug: If I'm looking up at an oak tree and I see these big orange shelf mushrooms growing about 20 feet up in the air, something's rotting there, is that right?

Lou: Yes. I can't guarantee it but yes, the chances are very good, that is a sign of rot within the tree.

Rob: It could be superficial, relatively superficial. It could be an old wound. Sometimes what we see whenever we're doing pruning cuts, we are wounding the tree. If it's a more substantial limb that we might be removing again for the house, again, more and more popular solar panels, but I don't think it's a good idea to remove a large diameter limb. We see sometimes decaying mushrooms growing on the open wound because that's exposed wood there. The decay mushroom is going to find a nice place to live there.

Sometimes the tree can seal that up if it's vigorous but a large wound like that is going to be difficult to seal up. Sometimes it's superficial, but more often that not, it at least requires closer inspection.

Doug: You're just filled with good news for me.

Lou: We bring it.

Doug: At the top of the show, I said that the topic was so important that we had two guests, but you guys just happened to be together today. Talk a little bit about why you were working together and a little bit about your jobs and how they work with each other.

Lou: Sure, my role as a regional business developer is I communicate and work with large properties throughout Maryland and DC. For instance, we're at an HOA at right now, townhomes, probably about 90 units and they have 120 to 150 trees under their management. I go out and I look at those and come up canopy management plans. I map them, come up priority levels for how we address it to help those large properties, manage those massive canopies, and the budgets that they're constrained to. HOAs, commercial sites, government sites in DC, I do a lot of those. Once I put together that plan, I then hand them off to the local offices like Rob.

Rob: Lou communicates with me, he tells me what he's got going on, he in this case asked me to meet him on the property. We walk around, look at all the trees that he's designated for some type of work, and of course, for most cases, working in the high-priority works. These are trees that have already been stressed and are dead, or are on the verge of death, or potentially hazardous, or they have dead wood over parking areas, that's extremely common. In this case, this community was probably built in the '80s. That's usually what we see.

We also get communities that are newer, where they had tree preservation plans and then also had to install a bunch of young trees. We may do some cabling or pruning for the large trees and care for those large trees, but then also that preventative maintenance, that upkeep, plant healthcare items for the younger trees that have just been transplanted into this new environment. Basically, we're going over everything and I'm assembling a plan in my mind of who's going to do the work and what equipment we need and then we execute it.

Doug: Oftentimes I see, and I've talked about this with arborists all the time, in new construction, things planted in the wrong spots, in what you guys are doing, are you seeing that, where the stuff's too close to the house or has it been planned out pretty well?

Lou: Well, a lot of times, the developer's hands are tied by the layout, or the landscaper's plans are tied by the layout of the site. That goes way back to zoning and planning far before ground is broken. You could say that about street trees that are planted in three-foot swales, put a tree wherever you can. There is a lot of planting to close to buildings, too close to sidewalks, but again, we have limited space and you got to put a tree in, you've got to put it somewhere. It's our job on the backend to try and manage that the best way we can.

Doug: Let's talk again about lichens, I know you don't need to remove them, but is there a reason you would want to get them off your tree. If you did, how would you get them off?

Lou: Yes, for aesthetic reasons, sometimes people want them removed, if that tree is the centerpiece of your property and you just don't like the way it looks with lichen or algae on the trunk. Trees can be accessories to the property as well, and they provide aesthetic value. In that case, you can use a copper-based fungicide to help kill the lichen, the fungi aspect of it, and then the algae will fall right off. You can also use some soaks to soften it up, and then a natural bristle brush to remove it if you can reach it.

What you absolutely don't want to use is a coarse bristle brush or a power washer, anything that can damage the bark of the tree. The bark of the tree is like our skin. It's the first line of defense, so you don't want to break the bark.

Doug: One thing that came up on the podcast, about a month ago, I think, was about Davey being employee-owned, what does that mean for you guys?

Rob: Well, one of my main things that it means for me is that over the course of now going on 12 years, I went from being a ground-level worker. I had climbed at a professional level, but in that nearly with the scientific knowledge and the skill set that I then gained. The emphasis on training that the company puts into building careers for employees, and then in the meantime, I've been able to invest in the company over the course of these 10 years just a little bit at a time.

Through an ESOP program, even just $25 at a time, and that fills up over the course of years. It gives me the career mentality that I've had, and my investment not only in the company but in the work that we're doing for the clients, that we want to be Davey clients for life, because we're Davey employees for life. We're invested in the company and the company invests in us

Lou: The biggest aspect for me is the company culture. It builds a sense of pride that I own part of this company along with currently 3,600 or 4,000 other folks or so. For every hour that I work, I'm getting paid an hourly rate on the front end, but on the back end, I know that because of my hard work, persistence, and dedication to representing the brand, on the back end, my stock is growing as well, and it just makes it worth all that much more to me.

Doug: Well, guys, I'm going to end it right there. That's great stuff. I appreciate all the information. That was a lot of fun, too, to talk to everybody again, and I'm sure we'll have an opportunity to talk soon. Thanks so much.

Lou: It was a good chat. I would say that I'm lichen it. [chuckles] Thanks, Doug.

Doug: Oh, ouch.

Lou: Thanks, Doug.

Doug: Oh, Lou and his dad jokes, right? I can't wait to talk to those two again, and I promise you we will. Next week, I'll be interviewing Dan Herms, one of my favorite tree scientists. He'll explain the details of something called forest fragmentation. It's a fascinating subject, and I can't wait for you to discover the details from Dan. Now, tune in every Thursday to the Talking Trees podcast from the Davey Tree Expert Company. I'm your host, Doug Oster, and do me a favor, subscribe to the podcast. We have fun as we cover these important topics. As always, we'd like to remind you on the Talking Trees podcast, trees are the answer.