Welcome to Tree Town!

If our town did not already have its name, we might call it Tree Town instead of Baton Rouge. This is because you can travel the world over without seeing so many beautiful oaks, magnolias, pines, sweet gums, crepe myrtles, maples, willows and cypress trees in one place. Of course, when Hurricane Gustav paid us a call on Labor Day, a tree in the yard became a tree in the house for hundreds of South Baton Rouge families.

What a tragedy it is to lose your home to a tree felled by wind and rain. Gustav and Ike brought us some of the strongest sustained winds Baton Rouge has seen in nearly 100 years. While it is hard to remain prepared for a wind event that occurs only once a century, there are steps to be taken and facts to be learned that can keep us from knowing the sickening feeling that comes when all or part of our home is destroyed by a falling tree.

The first thing we need to know is that all oak trees are not created equal. There are vast differences between live oaks, which have nearly black bark, and the many varieties of water oaks, which have grey bark. Another little known fact is that Southern red oak is just another variety of shallow-rooted water oaks.

The most important difference between oak trees is that a deeply rooted live oak can live for hundreds of years, while water oaks have very shallow roots and only live between 50 and 100 years. This means that if you have a 50-year-old water oak that could possibly fall and hit your home, right now is a good time to take it down, while the memory of Gustav is still fresh.

As South Baton Rouge grew in the 1950s, steadily increasing property taxes made it impossible to earn money by planting sugar cane and other crops in our area any longer. The fields were abandoned as real estate developers moved in to build subdivision after subdivision throughout the 1960s and 1970s.

Small volunteer trees - mostly fast growing water oaks, red oaks and sweet gums – quickly popped up everywhere in the abandoned fields. By the time the sewer system was installed and the streets were paved over in the new subdivisions, the volunteer trees were about as big around as a man’s arm. Naturally the real estate developers and young home owners buying and building on the outskirts of town saved as many of these volunteer trees as they possibly could. Now, nearly a half century later, just about all of the gums, water oaks and red oak trees are at full maturity. Many are ready to fall over the next time the wind blows 30 or 40 miles per hour in a sudden summer thunderstorm, much less a hurricane. Gustav and Ike proved beyond any shadow of doubt that thousands of our beautiful trees are in serious danger of falling.

Several years ago Baton Rouge Green, a nonprofit organization dedicated to maintaining and encouraging Baton Rouge’s urban forest, did a survey of the Magnolia Woods Subdivision for the Magnolia Woods Civic Association. The report showed that within the next few years many, if not most, of the trees in Magnolia Woods would begin to die. The report accurately predicted the situation that many homeowners in the subdivision now find themselves in, with great big trees looming over their homes, or actually falling and smashing cars and houses.

Deciding to remove a beautiful 50, 60 or 70-year-old tree that provides delightful shade in the summer can be a tough and expensive move. On the other hand, dealing with a large limb or a whole tree falling through your bedroom should provide all the incentive anyone needs to do what makes sense sooner rather than later.