Program honors state's Arbor Day heritage

Connie Jo Discoe/McCook Gazette

McCOOK, Neb. — Did you know that, according to McCook fourth graders, trees provide homes for sloths and food for koala bears? Well, maybe not in Nebraska: There aren't too many native sloths and koalas.

But what is "native" to Nebraska is the first and only U.S. national holiday that honors trees and promotes their planting, care and conservation.

Nebraska Forest Service community foresters Chrissy Land, who covers Western Nebraska, and Graham Herbst, who covers Eastern Nebraska, questioned Central Elementary fourth graders about the benefits of trees and taught them planting requirements during the school's installation of a new Linden tree on the playground and its observation of Arbor Day, which, in Nebraska, is officially the last Friday of April each year.

Chrissy Land and Graham Herbst, community foresters of the Nebraska Forest Service, teach McCook Central Elementary fourth graders about tree identification and tree planting during the school's Arbor Day observance Monday. Herbst said the trunk's "flare" must be visible above the ground. "Planting too deep will suffocate your tree," he said. Land added, "Don't pile mulch close to the trunk. It will turn soft and mushy just like your fingers in the bathtub."

Connie Jo Discoe/McCook Gazette

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In 1854, Julius "J." Sterling Morton graduated from the University of Michigan and married his sweetheart. On their wedding day, he and Carrie Joy moved to Nebraska where Morton became the editor of the "Nebraska News."

Coming from New York and Michigan and their forests of trees, Morton knew what his adopted state was missing — trees, lots of them. Over the next 18 years, Morton became an avid supporter of improving agricultural methods, trees and conservation and he served on the Nebraska Board of Agriculture and belonged to the state's Horticulture Society.

Connie Jo Discoe/McCook Gazette

On April 10, 1872, Morton made his love of trees very public by initiating a state holiday to plants trees and spread the word of their benefits. Nebraska residents and counties were offered prizes for properly planting the most trees. On that day, new Nebraskans (Nebraska had been a state for just five years) planted approximately 1 million trees.

Morton's staunch promotion of tree planting gained speed a year later, when the U.S. Congress passed the "Timber Claim Act" on March 3, 1873. The TCA offered homesteaders an additional 160 acres of land if they planted trees on one-quarter of the acres and kept them growing for 10 years. Tree claims were supposed to address the state's lack of wood and and eliminate in Nebraska what big government called almost one entire, useless "plain of grass."

Typical Nebraska weather challenged those early homesteaders and Morton's army of tree planters and huggers, but Nebraskans aren't easily discouraged. They're still loving and planting trees — up to six generations and 147 years ago.

Connie Jo Discoe/McCook Gazette

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Fourth graders could come up with lots of benefits of trees — clean air, windbreaks, paper, firewood, wood for building houses and dog houses, food and syrup, homes for animals and birds, shade, relaxing.

"Did you know," Herbst asked the kids, "That people in hospitals recover faster if they have a view of trees and green spaces? Why? Because trees positively impact your state of mind and how you heal. Did you know that trees fight, or prevent, crime? Why? Because trees make neighborhoods more friendly and 'walkable,' providing more eyeballs on what's going on in the neighborhood."

Chrissy taught students about the seed, root, trunk, branches, twigs, buds, leaves and flowers of trees — deciduous and evergreen.

She told them that some trees — ash, elms and poplars — produce seeds called winged "samaras" and fringy "catkins" that blow in the wind. "Why does a seed need 'wings'?" she asked. To plant itself away from the original tree, a fourth grader told her.

Herbst, Land, McCook arborist Bruce Hoffman and members of the city's Tree Advisory Board distributed Ponderosa pine tree seedlings and engravable name tags to the students. The seedlings were grown in the Bessey Nursery at Halsey, and donated to the students by the Middle Republican Natural Resources District in Curtis.

Hoffman said the Ponderosa is "native" to western Nebraska, meaning it was not introduced by man and it is compatible with Nebraska growing conditions and weather.

Herbst encouraged students to name their trees, and to hang the tags marked with their names, the tree's name and planting date.

He said, "When you graduate from high school, you're going to have a nice, big tree.”