Students replace trees on W&J campus
Jim McNutt/Observer-Reporter Dr. Jason Kilgore, botany professor at Washington & Jefferson College, addresses the crowd during W&J’s fourth annual Arbor Day observance held behind the U. Grant Miller Library on the college campus Friday afternoon.
Students from Washington High School’s gifted and talented class assist Washington & Jefferson College botany students in planting new trees behind the U. Grant Miller Library on campus Friday in honor of Arbor Day.
A Washington & Jefferson College English major immersed in “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight” may have done a double take Friday afternoon if he or she encountered some verdant-faced students on campus.
Alas and alack, ’twas Arbor Day at W&J and, occurring in the same week as Earth Day, time for a teachable moment. Ash trees in this part of the country are fading faster than embers because of a gem of a pest from China known as the emerald ash borer.
Placards on the campus warn of the scourge that caused several trees to be felled, and many more along East Wheeling Street between South College and South Lincoln will have to be removed in the future.
“They will be dead within one to three years,” explained botany professor Dr. Jason Kilgore about trees that are infested with ash borer larvae that feed on the layer between wood and bark, depriving the tree of nutrients.
The woodsman may not be sparing the ax, but students from both the college and Washington High School marked Arbor Day by planting four gingko trees to replace three stately ash behind the U. Grant Miller Library that succumbed to infestation.
Two of the four gingkoes were paid for by a $500 grant from the “2014 Tree Campus USA – Celebrate Arbor Day” contest sponsored by the Arbor Day Foundation and Toyota, with W&J picking up the tab for the other pair.
W&J was one of 10 small-school winners because of the number online votes it garnered as part of a contest in November, not just for ash replacement, but for proposing to branch out by inviting Wash High students to help with the planting, learn about the problems caused by invasive species and study of timber discs to determine when the trees began to succumb to ash borers.
Jake Meyers, an environmental studies major from Richboro, Bucks County, and Mackenzie Jakobs, a junior biology major from Gettysburg, spruced up for Arbor Day by painting their faces leaf green and wearing, respectively, T-shirts with the slogans “We Hug Trees” and “Plant Trees.”
Each instructed a team that dug a hole, hoisted a 200-pound gingko with burlap-wrapped root ball and properly positioned the 15-foot sapling before shoveling in soil before watering liberally.
The foursome are the first gingkoes to grace the W&J campus. That means more work for senior computer information studies major Nate Pisciottano, who prepared an interactive database of the 1,300 or so trees on the grounds.
“It definitely helped me grow in professional skills,” said Pisciottano, who already has a job lined up in his field after graduation. The fruits of his labors can be see at www.washjeff-arboretum.org.
Wash High teacher Debbie Mainwaring and her students walked the several blocks between her school and the campus – the better to conserve fossil fuels – so they could participate in the planting.
Blake Smith, 17, never planted a tree before, and he doesn’t foresee using the skills in the near future. Interested in engineering, the species “gingko” is one he hadn’t encountered. Who knows where he might eventually put down roots, but he could take the little legacy that began Friday to heart.
“I might drive by here and show my future kids,” Smith said.