The scene of the event is cordoned off with yellow plastic tapes, preventing passers-by from approaching to browse.
Standing next to the victim, two uniformed men converse in low voices, look up, assess the situation carefully.
Will it be an isolated incident, or is there a risk of a repeat?
We are in Tokyo, and the victim in question is a broken branch of respectable diameter, perhaps from a Japanese ash tree.
A few days later, we spied two other uniformed people in a Kyoto park circling a pine tree, gazing at it from all angles while one of them took copious notes in a notebook.
I recognize them instantly, although it is not until later that I discover how they define their profession:
tree doctors,
"
tree doctors
."
This is not a rarity in Japan, far from it: in recent decades a professional figure capable of managing, diagnosing and dictating appropriate treatments for the trees that surround us has been consolidated.
In Spanish, this discipline is usually called arboriculture (and hence the name of the AEA, the Spanish Arboricultural Association), and arborists or arboriculturists are those who dedicate themselves to it.
Their intervention and expert advice are especially appreciated when trees (for example, urban areas) have suffered damage of some kind, either due to an extreme weather event (typhoons, snowstorms, droughts, etc.), or unfortunate encounters caused by human action.
It does not matter much who is to blame: for the tree, a broken branch is a broken branch.
Luckily, plants have faced these types of problems for millions of years and plant architecture is ready to solve them… But it is always advisable to know how to help them.
Tree doctors in Kyoto.
Aina S. Erice
Doctor, what's wrong with my tree?
In broad strokes, trees face two main types of problems: mechanical (such as a branch breaking in a gale), and biological (such as a wild mealybug infection).
Of course, these can - and usually do - combine: trees with poorly healed wounds, battered roots, or weakened by drought or lack of nutrients, are much more vulnerable to any infection ... And, unfortunately, this description suits you like a ring to the finger to a good part of the urban trees.
True: what we would qualify as a catastrophe in human terms is often nothing more than an inconvenience, or a failed investment in plant terms.
Well, plants are modular beings, and this implies that the secret plans to rebuild a new plant from scratch are encoded in practically all the cells of the plant (hence rethinking cloning the monumental trees of Madrid is not only feasible, but relatively easy if we compare it with animal cloning).
If a branch dies, perhaps the closest sleeping bud will wake up and "replace" the previous one;
In the worst case, if you cut a tree flush and leave its root system intact, it is likely to regrow again (although not everyone is capable of doing so).
Trees constantly lose branches;
some species even shed their dead wood, in something like an "auto pruning".
Nor is it uncommon to see trees in the field victims of some infection that has eaten away their internal wood (their memory of a tree), leaving them alive but with a hollow trunk.
In ecological terms, these specimens can be a boon to the environments where they live, serving as shelter and / or food for creatures that could otherwise become extinct.
(It is another thing to talk about forest pests, which can cause serious imbalances in an ecosystem.)
However, that a tree is "self-pruning" in a forest we do not care;
That it does it on top of where you have parked the car (or on top of you), no.
We are above all concerned with the health of the trees that live in the environments we manage: the urban world, the agricultural world, the forest world.
Each of these is interested in different aspects of the tree and - as Marc Castilla, from the Associació Balear de l'Arbre tells me - the criteria for treating each specimen depend on the purpose in mind.
A recommended action in an agricultural environment can become absurd if we apply it in an urban park, simply because.
That is why the trained look of the professional is required, who knows how to assess the health status of the trees, with instruments to quantify it, and with knowledge to make decisions in this regard in case their health is not good: does it represent a risk? Is it an acceptable risk? Can we minimize it in any way?
Doctor, will my tree get good?
When faced with a mechanical break (for example, a broken branch), your options are limited;
Fixing it with a bit of glue and a bandage will not work, but you can try to leave the wound as clean as possible, and prevent it from getting infected, so that the tree forms a clean and healthy scar.
Unfortunately, many times we not only fail in this task, but we even spread the disease by pruning without having disinfected the tools before;
This is what Luís Núñez, a forest engineer who deals with plant health, comments on it, and a good connoisseur of the damage that microbes, fungi or insects can cause in trees.
There are infections and pests for which we have more or less effective treatments (eg against the pine processionary, or the red palm weevil);
other times we are faced with diseases for which, to date, we have no cure, and which in some cases have become true plant pandemics.
Perhaps in Europe the most paradigmatic case is that of elm graphiosis, but it is not the only one (the history of the canker of American chestnut trees is equally dramatic).
But imagine that you have been lucky: the tree is not touched to death, and technically it could be rehabilitated.
The question is: at what price?
This kind of supports are common in Japanese parks such as Kenrokuen, in Kanazawa
"I saved it, I didn't save it, I saved it, I didn't save it ..."
There are justified reasons for felling a tree.
If the species was not carefully chosen, if it has suffered repeated damage that has compromised its structural integrity, making it a potential danger to the beings around it, recovery may be impossible, or inordinately expensive.
Carry out the appropriate pruning, aerate and decompress the soil, prop up branches ... any arboreal rehabilitation measure has a cost.
However, cutting down, removing and replacing a tree is not free either, and it is curious to see how the efforts we are willing to make to save a tree vary depending on where we consider.
"Here, the tree bothers," says Núñez;
according to whom, any excuse is good to eliminate these uncomfortable citizens who litter and attract sparrows that leave everything lost.
In Spain, each local administration manages its own tree heritage, and there are not many who have attended courses of affection towards trees;
not all entrust their care to qualified technicians.
Investing in healthy trees requires patience, knowing how to transcend immediacy and think long-term, twenty, thirty, forty years from now;
and it requires respect and recognition towards the professional sector that makes it possible.
At the end of the day, "what is the value of a tree?", Reflects the arborist Toni Calafell.
If we conceive them as beautiful furniture that adorns the city, and for one reason or another they cease to conform to our model of aesthetic perfection and become ugly, does that mean that they must be cut down, that they have nothing to contribute to the environment?
(Ah, happy canons of aesthetic perfection ...) "They are one of the pillars of life, but we do not take care of them as such" laments Calafell.
If it is old and unique trees, of those that could participate in the Tree of the Year contest, perhaps more will be invested in rehabilitating and protecting them.
But if we neglect the attention to the young and adult trees of our grove, when the venerable old men disappear, who will replace them?
The winter prints of the Japanese garden of Kenrokuen, in the Japanese city of Kanazawa, famous for the
yukitsuri
techniques
(implemented to protect the trees from the ravages of snow);
however, they are not the only Japanese examples of tree care, far from it.
In no other place have I seen so many beautifully propped trees, supported with cables, protected with mesh;
In gardens or public parks you can see trees whose branches carry support crutches that anticipate and prevent falls and breakage in case of excessive weight.
It will be expensive or cheap, but it is a price they are willing to pay for their trees.
And investing in trees, which give us so many gifts - including oxygen, which is no small thing - is a sure bet for the future.
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