Soggy Saturday morning and split trees [Updated with new photo]

About the time I went to bed last night, rain arrived with rumbling thunder in the distance. I never saw any lightning, however. It has been raining steadily this morning (it is 9:45 right now) and I have been writing, transferring music from  a CD to my MP3 player, cleaning litter boxes and so on. Right now I am brewing a cup of green tea. Before long it will be morning snack time -- an apple and a bit of peanut butter.

If you live in an urban area, you might wonder why people like us who essentially live surrounded by woods would want to plant more trees. One reason is that the local poplars are nicknamed topplers because they snap off about twelve feet off the ground in strong winds. The local woodpeckers do their part to weaken the skinny trees and prepare them for the wind to do the rest. So Tom buys seedlings from the county every year and plants them around the place so that new trees -- mostly evergreens, but not all -- are growing up and ready to fill the gaps when the poplars topple and the remnants are taken down.

Among the trees Tom planted are a couple of river birch behind the house, near the bird feeder and forming a nice part of the view from our dining room window with their curling bark. They have grown up nicely, fifteen feet or so. Yesterday Tom noticed that the larger of the two, which had forked out a bit at the top, is in the process of splitting down the trunk. That is the split outlined in red. Click on the image to enlarge it. It is still raining outside and this is not the best photo, but you get an idea. It may look like the tree is merely forking at that point, but the trunk has a very definite split of about two feet downward from where it had forked. The smaller picture highlights the split in black. You can click on it, too.

Older pictures Tom took out back show that it had started splitting at least two weeks ago, but it was so slight that we had not noticed. We have had high winds, and that probably began the process. Definitely not hit by lightning. We have had that happen before and the result is quite different.

Since Tom first noticed it, the trunk has split another six inches or so and looks like it may keep going. This has led to much mumbling and fretting about what to do. The rain is preventing any closer observation (or photos!) and providing time for speculation. At the moment it sounds like Tom will take the tree down completely, but he does like it and may remove only the splitting part that is leaning toward the house. My suspicion is that he will do that first and then decide whether to proceed.

Tom took this photo showing the split more clearly.

As I pointed out, it's not like we don't have any trees. And there is that other river birch growing next to the split one. That is its slender trunk angling along the side of the bird feeder in the small picture. It is not as nice a specimen, but maybe with the other one gone, it will get the light and nourishment it needs to flourish.

Here's a better -- i.e., not mine -- photo of the bark, which helps explain why Tom wants the tree to survive.