The Single Most Important Tree In Denver

   This. This is most likely not meant to be funny, but it cracked me up like no comedian ever has when I first saw it.

   Why? Well, for starters it's attached to a fence that surrounds a single tree, as you can see in the photo below.

   The idea the city of Denver has a Forester driving around looking for special trees to protect is off the unintentional comedy scale...at least to me. 

   For several reasons, not the least being that trees for the most part are somewhat invasive to the area. Denver was built upon a treeless prairie - there are a number of books available that compare pictures of Denver taken 100 or more years apart (the most well-known being John Fielder's Colorado 1870 - 2000) which clearly show that fact. The only trees around in the early days of Denver were the Cottonwoods that grew along the banks of the South Platte river and other, smaller waterways.

   Denver's climate is really, really dry - semi-arid if you will. This is also a well-known fact. Plus, the soil hereabouts is piss-poor, naturally high in alkali, which means low soil water infiltration capacity.

   Those are not factors that are conducive to natural tree growth, which is why Denver might be home to one of the world's largest man-made urban forest. Most of the trees that can be found in the city of Denver were planted under the direction of then Mayor Robert Speer over a century ago, and all those trees were planted from saplings imported from points east of the Mississippi. So yeah, invasive.

   Before anyone starts in with how necessary trees are, please know that I am well aware of their role in ecosystem balance, erosion prevention, squirrel, chipmunk and bird lodging, etc. 

   I'm not a tree-hater, quite the opposite I'm a tree lover.

   But I'm also a realist who knows that, A) Trees are one of the most (if not the most) renewable resources on the planet, and B) Most trees, especially hardwood trees like the one in the picture, have definite lifespans (on average 70 to 150 years). The time, effort, and energy (not to mention the money, which I am obviously mentioning) that is going into preserving that one tree could go to much, much better use - maybe helping the homeless population deal with the deadly cold winter we're experiencing this year, eh?