Rooting to save old trees

When neighbors and the Woodland Park Zoo began fighting this spring, it seemed like your typical Seattle spat over trees.

The zoo wants to cut down four cherry trees. The neighbors want them saved. Standoffs like this usually flow as predictably as the seasons.

Only this time, Olaf Ribeiro jumped in. Things got radical.

In fact the Bainbridge Island arborist and plant pathologist is "so way out there" — his words, not mine — that, if he's right in his central argument, it could alter dramatically how we think about trees. As well as the ways we use the lands they live on.

Because he believes trees are immortal. Can live forever.

It's right there on page 3 of a four-page report he submitted last week on the Woodland Park cherry trees (talk about burying the news.)

The zoo says the trees are old and diseased, so should be felled. Essentially, this is the view we've had of trees for hundreds of years. When in doubt, cut 'em out. We can grow new ones.

Talk about not seeing the forest for the trees, Ribeiro says.

"This is an outdated concept that has been shown to be of little consequence," he wrote, recommending the trees be saved. He added he could "refute the idea that these cherry trees have a limited life span."

Really? I asked him. These trees can live forever?

"It's a radical concept, I know," he says. "I'm questioning what's been taken as gospel in the arboriculture textbooks for generations. I think it can be shown that trees like the ones at Woodland Park can live for at least 50 to 100 years or more. Maybe longer. So much longer than we thought that the idea of a comprehensible 'life span' becomes moot."

Considering scientists discovered a 9,500-year-old spruce in Sweden last year, this might not be so far-fetched.

Ribeiro, 70, was once a plant-pathology professor at the University of California, Riverside. He wrote two textbooks and now runs a tree- evaluation business out of a shack behind his Bainbridge Island home. From there he's attracted international attention for his novel theories on trees.

He says tree care focuses on the wrong thing — namely, the parts of the tree you can see. What matters is hidden: the roots and soil.

In partnership with a Port Orchard lawn-care guy who grows bacteria cultures in his garage, Ribeiro developed a potion of microbes, fungus and humic acid. He claims it can jump-start growth in even the most ancient, decrepit trees, once injected around the roots.

This fountain of youth worked on a 200-year-old Oak in Olympia. And, so far, on the state's largest Madrona tree, a goliath in Port Angeles that is 21 feet around at the base (and an estimated 400 years young.)

Parts of older trees may die or collapse, but that doesn't mean the whole tree is fading.

The Woodland Park cherry trees? They're babies, he said.

"They are perfectly healthy. If treated right, they will be here far longer than you or I will."

Following Ribeiro's report, the zoo, prompted by the city, backed off its plans to cut the trees. For now anyway.

I don't know what science makes of trees living forever. The drive to forestall death in ancient trees, sometimes at huge expense, has been dissed in the past as "geriatric forestry."

Ribeiro will present his work next month in front of arborists and ecologists at a scientific conference in London.

"Maybe they'll say I'm off my rocker," he laughs. "Or maybe they'll say I'm onto something."

But what would society make of it? As revered as trees can be, they have long been disposable to us. They are ornaments or crops. We make them get out of the way of most anything we want to do.

What if it turns out they're immortal, though? Like green Gods? We'll never look at the everyday tree the same again.

Danny Westneat's column appears Wednesday and Sunday. Reach him at 206-464-2086 or dwestneat@seattletimes.com.