The Red Maple exhibiting yellow foliage and new growth that has died.
Last year I investigated why it is faring poorly, while a Sugar Maple (acer saccharum) of about the same age that was transplanted at the same time is thriving. I learned that while Sugar Maples will tolerate a range of soil pH Red Maples need acidic soil. The Maine coast is very acidic, the chances are good that the Red Maple would have done very well where it was. Here along the coastal plain of Lake Ontario the soil is decidedly neutral to alkaline. An online tree forum had a question posted which described a Red Maple with the same symptoms: yellow leaves and new growth shriveling in summer, the poster wanted to know what to do. The response was to remove the tree. While the maple might be temporarily helped by the addition of elemental Sulfur, ultimately it would weaken and die because it had been planted where the soil pH was not favorable.
So now I prevaricate between removal of the tree immediately or a long futile battle with the same ultimate result. Reduced to grimy pragmatism, digging out the tree means the loss of six years of poor growth and the price of some soil amendments. However my thoughts quickly turn, time and again, to the real failure: I should have determined if a Red Maple could survive here before I transplanted it, should have known better, should have been a better caretaker.
Occasionally I am side-tracked into thinking that this is an example in miniature of what now seems to be humanity's great accomplishment (altering the environment) and failure (fear of stopping alterations that have long term negative effects for us and nature). I didn't know, didn't even care to find out, what the maple needed to survive, I just went ahead and did what I wanted. Prior to understanding the web of ecosystems that support life on Earth, humans populated the planet, released millions of years of stored Carbon into the atmosphere, and poisoned many of the resources we need to survive. Now that I understand something about Red Maples isn't it incumbent that I try to discern and do the right thing?
I don't want to kill the tree; At heart I am a lifer, a conserver, a nurturer. I move toads fleeing the lawn mower, and wince when I drive worm-covered streets following a prolonged rain. Life is too difficult and precarious to throw away in a cavalier manner. Too often the fate of a living thing seems to depend on the whim of a dim, ignorant, and capricious universe. I believe the greatest thing a twenty first century human can do is to learn about, appreciate, and defend the lives of all creatures on Earth.
For the Red Maple I have discovered no unambiguous right answer, just thoughts like an Ouroboros going around endlessly: worth of the tree compared to the weed I pull out unhesitatingly; do nothing and hope that the tree will strike an unknown pocket of alkaline soil; it's my fault for moving the tree anyway; maybe it will just die quickly on its own; repeat with variation… Yet in a dry, antiseptic, sterile region of my mind bores the grubby unhappy answer. To paraphrase: is this a round-pointed shovel I see before me?
