For many Northeast Ohio communities hit by tornadoes in early August, much of the clean-up work is behind them.
However, it may be some time before the same can be said for one of the region’s natural gems: the Holden Arboretum in Kirtland.
"This was a white pine, and it appears to have hit a hemlock on its way down."
That’s Tom Arbour. He’s the curator of living collections at the Holden Arboretum. In a recent tour, he showed some of the havoc wreaked by the storm.
One tornado traveled across the arboretum, Arbour said, but they also had what the National Weather Service calls a macroburst -- a high-speed downdraft that can be up two-and-a-half miles in diameter.
So far they’ve cleaned up more than 30 trees that were knocked down, he said, and are assessing what to do with 115 others that are damaged.
"This is a Norway spruce, and this place is called Spruce Knoll," Arbour said. "These are some of our oldest trees in our collection. They've been here for decades and decades and decades."
This Norway spruce has a jagged wound where a tall offshoot from the trunk was torn off. The fallen portion of the tree lies before us on the ground.
The concern is whether the spruce's injury is too big to properly heal, Vice President of Horticulture and Collections Caroline Tait, said.
"Even though [it's] wonderful, the majority of the tree is standing, actually, we have to consider taking the whole thing out," she said. "That's what, three stories? Four story house there?"
The decision on what to do with each damaged tree is a collaborative one involving the expertise of the arboretum’s team. With the proper TLC, damaged trees like the spruce will be able to heal themselves overtime, Tait said.
"A key way that you can help that happen is when you make that clean cut, ... you do it on an angle so the water runs off. You don't want any water sitting on the wound," she said. "Typically trees are very good at doing that then healing, and then as they grow, that wound will just get enclosed by the rest of the trunk as it eventually just gets bigger and bigger."
The storm altered pockets of the landscape at the arboretum. Tait pointed to the Buckeye Bluffs section where falling trees took out the zip line and left gaping holes in its tree canopy.
But these changes offer an opportunity for new life, she said.
"What are all the seedlings that are suddenly going to burst out of the ground because now they have the light to do it?" Tait said. "It'll be really interesting over the coming, years and decades to see how those light gap areas reestablish."
Tait says they were able to reopen 250 acres at the heart of the arboretum a week after the storm. A week later, they managed to reopen many of the gardens and walking trails. Even so, the full recovery and restoration could take months.
Holden does have ways to use the fallen trees so they don't go to waste. Some are turned to wood chips and used as mulch, others are revamped into outdoor furniture. And for trees that aren’t blocking trails, Tait said they can be left where they are.
"We call them nurse logs because they're actually the beginning of the next phase of life," she said. "For other, you know, fungi and lichens and the small plants and lots of bugs and little critters that come in and start living in that wood as it degrades."
When it comes to maintaining its curated collection of trees, Arbour said they’ll look for ways to preserve what was lost through taking cuttings of trees that were damaged.
"We’re assessing, we’re determining which ones we want to repropagate, so that we can preserve the genetic material of the tree and keep growing part of it for years to come," he said. "The original tree itself has died, but literally its clone can live on."
