The Tree-Man

07/11/2026

06/23/2026

Drive through any US suburb. Look at the trees.

Mulch volcanoes. EVERYWHERE.

Giant mounds of mulch piled against tree trunks like volcanos. 8, 10, 12 inches high. Touching the bark. Burying the root flare.

Your landscaper does this because it "looks neat."

It's killing your tree.

What mulch volcanoes cause:
Bark rot — constant moisture against bark creates fungal infections. The bark softens and decays.
Girdling roots — roots grow INTO the mulch instead of outward, circling the trunk and eventually strangling the tree.
Root suffocation — buried root flare can't breathe. Roots grow upward into mulch instead of down into soil.
Rodent damage — mice and voles nest in the warm, moist mulch and chew the bark. Ring-barking kills the tree.
Insect harbor — moisture-loving pests thrive.

CORRECT mulching:
2-4 inches deep. MAXIMUM.
Pull mulch AWAY from the trunk — leave a 3-6 inch gap.
Shape like a DONUT, not a volcano.
Spread to the drip line if possible.
Never touch bark.

The root flare (where trunk widens into roots) should ALWAYS be visible.

If your landscaper builds mulch volcanoes, fire your landscaper.

Your tree will thank you.

06/23/2026

Does this describe you?

06/16/2026

Happy Arborist Day World!

take me to the trees.
take me to me.

06/16/2026

Tree Bark Identification 🌲

06/16/2026

🦋 Monarch caterpillars are usually found on milkweed, and they become one of America’s most loved butterflies, famous for their long migration.

🦋 Black Swallowtail caterpillars are often found on parsley, dill, fennel, carrots, and Queen Anne’s lace, and they become beautiful garden pollinators.

🦋 Eastern Tiger Swallowtail caterpillars usually live on wild cherry, tulip tree, birch, ash, and other native trees, and the adults are important nectar visitors.

🦋 Mourning Cloak caterpillars are often found on willow, elm, birch, poplar, and hackberry, and they become one of the first butterflies seen in spring.

🦋 Red Admiral caterpillars usually hide in folded leaves of nettles and false nettle, and the adults help pollinate flowers while feeding on nectar.

🦋 Luna Moth caterpillars are found on walnut, hickory, sweetgum, birch, and persimmon, and they become one of the most beautiful native moths in the USA.

🦋 Cecropia Moth caterpillars are often found on maple, cherry, apple, birch, willow, and lilac, and they become North America’s largest native moth.

🦋 Tomato Hornworm caterpillars are usually found on tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, and potatoes, but they become large native hawkmoths, so it’s better to move them instead of crushing them.

06/16/2026

In 1997, a Canadian forest ecologist named Suzanne Simard did something that sounded almost absurd.

She wanted to know if trees were talking to each other.

Not metaphorically.

Literally.

At the time, forests were largely viewed as places of competition. Trees competed for sunlight. They competed for water. They competed for nutrients. Survival belonged to the strongest.

Simard suspected something was missing from that picture.

Deep beneath the forest floor, she knew that tree roots were connected to vast networks of fungi. These microscopic fungal threads, known as mycorrhizae, attach themselves to roots and stretch through the soil for miles.

Most scientists viewed the fungi as simple nutrient traders.

Simard wondered if they were something more.

So she ran an experiment.

Using radioactive carbon tracers, she tracked the movement of nutrients between trees in a forest in British Columbia.

What she found surprised almost everyone.

Carbon was moving from one tree to another.

Not through the air.

Not through falling leaves.

Through the fungal network underground.

The trees were connected.

More remarkably, the largest and oldest trees appeared to function as central hubs. They were linked to hundreds of neighboring trees through the fungal web, sending nutrients across the network.

Simard called them "mother trees."

These ancient giants were not simply surviving.

They were supporting others.

When young seedlings struggled in deep shade, mother trees transferred carbon, water, and nutrients to them. When a tree was damaged by insects or disease, chemical warning signals could move through the network, helping neighboring trees prepare their defenses before the threat arrived.

The forest behaved less like a collection of individuals and more like a community.

Then researchers discovered something even stranger.

In some forests, centuries-old tree stumps that had long since lost their trunks were still alive.

No leaves.

No photosynthesis.

No obvious way to survive.

Yet living tissue continued to exist inside them.

The explanation appeared to be their neighbors.

Through the underground fungal network, nearby trees were still supplying the stumps with nutrients, keeping them alive decades after they should have died.

A forest that many people imagined as a battlefield turned out to be something closer to a society.

Competition still existed.

But so did cooperation.

Support.

Communication.

Connection.

Today, scientists continue studying what is often called the "wood wide web"—the hidden mycorrhizal network linking roots beneath the soil.

Many questions remain unanswered, and researchers still debate exactly how much information moves through these fungal highways.

But one thing is clear.

The ground beneath a forest is far from empty.

Beneath every step lies a living network millions of years old.

A world of roots and fungi.

A world where trees share resources, send warnings, nurture their young, and remain connected long after we stop seeing what holds them together.

Nature is not nearly as silent as it appears.

Most of its conversations simply happen underground.