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Forestry department plants 100 trees in Jessamine

April 15, 2009|Tyler Young

If you happen to see a few more trees around Jessamine County in about 100 years, you can thank Kent Slusher.

The state forester for Jessamine County spent much of last Wednesday afternoon planting approximately 100 trees in parks around the area in an effort to add some green to Kentucky's fourth least-forested county.

"We're doing it as an Arbor Day event to promote tree planting in Jessamine County," Slusher said while putting a bur oak in the ground at Lake Mingo Park. "We're going to take over Clark County (the fifth least-forested county). If we can get ahead of Clark, then we've beat one county."

That's not to say that man has come through the area and hacked down all of the trees that were here. The bottom five counties in terms of forested acres are in central Kentucky, which is largely because of the fact that this region was mostly savannah when it was settled. But Slusher said that doesn't mean the county could benefit from a few more trees, especially since February's ice storm took a toll.

"We've lost a lot of trees," Slusher said. "Instead of planting things like red maple and non-native species like bradford pear, we'll go for multigenerational trees like bur oak, shumard oak and some of these trees that are 300-year-old trees my kids' kids can enjoy."

Bur oak and shumard oak are both native trees to central Kentucky. According to Slusher, they will grow over about 150 years to 80 to 100 feet, and they have a 200 to 300-year life span.

"(Shumard oak) is the number-one red oak for central Kentucky," Slusher said. "When you go out to native woodland, that's what you find. (Bur oak) is the one that you see on horse farms and older established farms."

The forester said that he wants to continue to spread the word about tree planting around the community and will continue to do planting events in the future.

"This is the beginning," he said. "We're trying to do each year a little bit of reforestation. Make it a happy place."

For more information on reforestation in central Kentucky, contact the department of forestry at (502) 573-1085.

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