Why Weak Trees Still Stand

Reader Sue Krause checked in with a good question after the recent spat of high winds in Door County:

“Northern Door is studded with the corpses of dead Lombardy poplar trees,” she noted, referring to the tall, slender trees often seen in rows along property lines or fields as wind breaks. “Why don’t these dead trees ever fall down during wind storms while healthy trees all around them are going down?”

So I passed the question along to our resident nature experts Roy and Charlotte Lukes. Charlotte responded quickly to the query:

“When the Lombardy poplars die they lose a branch now and then. Notice that they are quite columnar, tall and don’t have a large spreading crown. There is less wind resistance on those trees than the large trees with wide crowns loaded with many wide branches and a lot of leaves. Make sense?”

She said she did spot one such tree down after the September wind storm. Incidentally, Roy says that “Lombardy poplars have a short life span and should never be planted up here.”