Re: ivy was: Hydrangea Vine

Well, Sheila, I think, with all due respect to your 'tree people',
what you've been told is hogwash.  A tree's roots extend quite some
distance from the canopy, perhaps twice the diameter or more.  If the
tree is dying, it is from some other cause, not the ivy growing on it
or around it.  If trees could not survive the competition of plants
growing around them, there wouldn't be any forests or woodlands in
nature. Woodlands, in all climates, are full of lower story plants
with all kinds of root systems.  In nature, trees host many species
of vines in perfect harmony.  Trees actually are the water and
nutrient hogs in any group of plants.

Sorry about your ash tree, but I think the cause of its demise is
something else.  Trees, do, of course, have allotted time spans, just
like all living creatures.  They mature and then they decline...they
are subject to myriad diseases and prey to weather cycles...the
effects of drought can take a few years to show up in a tree, but
will weaken them and encourage disease organisms to take hold.  Their
roots can be damaged by compacted soil caused by foot and vehicle
traffic or construction activities that take place even many feet
away from the trunk of the tree...or grade elevation changes.  Root
damage from these or other causes can take years to make itself
evident it the health of the tree.

Ash (Fraxinus) are, according to Dirr, susceptible to many problems,
including:  Leaf rust, leaf spots (many types) cankers (many types)
dieback, ash borer, lilac leaf miner, lilac borer, carpenter worm,
brown-headed ash sawfly, fall webworm, ash flower gall, oyster shell
scale and scrufy scale....

It is so easy to blame ivy because it is there and you can see it,
while the correct diagnosis of some pathogen or bygone drought or
root injury is not so simple.

Vines, in my experience, can kill other plants in only two
ways...they can, if twiners, like honeysuckle, strangle a youngish
plant and they can, if extremely vigorous - like Kudzu, wisteria or
wild grape, overcome the canopy, blotting out all sunlight and
further act as a sail in high winds which can cause a large tree to
fall if it is not firmly anchored or if the soil is saturated.

I've grown ivy up mature trees for a quarter of a century and the
trees are doing just fine.  Ivy can be eradicated with a certain
amount of dedication...I've done that, too.  Cutting it back to the
soil line for a year or two and not allowing new leaves to form will
kill it.  Ivy roots go deep, but they can be dug out - I've done
that, too, and not had any return. It will not, in my experience,
resprout from small pieces of root left in the soil if the main roots
are removed.

Marge Talt, zone 7 Maryland
mtalt@clark.net
Editor:  Gardening in Shade
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> From: Mike Cook & Sheila Smith <mikecook@PIPELINE.COM>
> Date: Wednesday, March 01, 2000 6:20 PM
>
> Hi; I don't know about the climbing hydrangea, but I have
> impossible-to-eradicate hardy ivy growing around an ash tree.  The
tree is
> slowly dying, branch by branch...'tree people' have told me this is
because
> the ivy hogs nutrients and water, and the tree slowly starves to
death.  It
> can take as long as 20 years to finish the tree off, but by the
time the
> problem is noticeable, the tree is too far gone to save, even
thought it
> may yet be 10 years away from the end.  Any vine with a
superficial, dense
> root system I would not plant by any tree with deeper feeder roots.
>
>
> Sheila Smith
> mikecook@pipeline.com
> Niles, MI  USA, Z 5/6
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