Favorite Trees for Arbor Day
Arbor Day celebrates its 151st year in 2023. This day is used to pause and acknowledge the incredible impact trees have on our environment, culture, economy, and day-to-day lives. We at Arborjet | Ecologel enjoy trees just as much as the next person, maybe even more. We asked two of our employees, High Plains Regional Technical Manager Korey Lofy, and Great Lakes Regional Technical Manager Joe Aiken, to tell us about their favorite trees.
Korey – ginko
One of my favorite trees of all time is the Ginkgo Biloba – specifically a ginkgo from my hometown.
One of the projects we had in high school was to find “magnificent specimen trees” in our town. This Ginkgo is located at Covenant Harbor Camp, on Lake Geneva’s shore in southeastern Wisconsin. This monster ginkgo was the state champion ginkgo for quite some time and has been registered as a Wisconsin Historical Tree. It has a diameter greater than 3ft, appears to be structurally sound, and when I visited in mid April, it looked just as good as it did 15 years ago!
The ginko is a fascinating tree. Their leaves turn bright yellow leaves in the fall, and their fan-shaped leaves make them easy to identify. They’re been around since before the dinosaurs, and can change gender (from male to female) when they get older or stressed – something they have done as an adaptation to survive this long. They don’t have many issues with insects or diseases. And they’re fun to climb too!
Joe – white pine
My favorite tree is the White Pine. With my love of history and the northern part of the Midwest and Michigan, white pine was gold during the heyday of logging. (1860’s thru 1900’s). As a kid I remember seeing a white pine called the Monarch in a state park and have been mesmerized with this species since. This particular white pine is on my property in Barryton, Michigan. Having easy access to this tree is great!
And for an interesting piece of history, white pine logging drew loggers from all over the world to the Midwest and most did very well. One terrible and mean Canadian logger named Joe Fournier went on to become a legend, we know him a Paul Bunyan!
Spend some time outside with a favorite tree today, and appreciate all they bring to your life.
