Cutting aspen this time of year?

[old CB]

I was helping on a volunteer fire mitigation project yesterday, cutting in a mixed stand of lodgepole pine, Doug Fir, and aspen at about 8,000’ elevation (Nederland, CO). We remove the trees marked by a county forester, and swampers haul the wood and slash to the roadside. As this is my day job, I’m familiar with what goes and what stays, so I told the landowner that several dead stems of aspen should also be removed even though they’d not been marked with blue paint.

Landowner tells me that the forester who’d marked the trees was adamant that no aspens be cut except during dormancy, even the dead ones. I know of course that a stand of aspen is actually one large organism, and I know that they’re considered a delicate tree. The notion here is that cutting even a dead stem during the growing season could allow that stand to be infected or infested by bad stuff—tech term there.

I’m skeptical. But I learn new things all the time, so I wonder what folks with more extensive training than mine have to say?

(We went ahead and dropped a number of aspens, live and dead, on an adjoining place.)

 

[ChoppyChoppy]

Here they grow like weeds and they are really tough to kill. Perhaps just a local thing? We call the trees "poplar" because the woods is a mix of cottonwood, aspen and sort of "crossbred" aspen/cottonwoods. (All in the poplar family)
Also because cottonwood is nearly a swear word but poplar isnt. Can barely give it away as cottonwood, but can sell it just fine as poplar.

 

[old CB]

Because I started out in the woods back east, upstate NY on the Canadian border, I can't shake the idea that poplar is mostly just a trash tree. Back there it's what creeps into overgrown farmland as nature's attempt to reclaim open ground for the woods. Unless you're cutting pulp, it's just a big weak wood that's in the way. So I'm with you on that.

Here, aspen is held in high regard. First because it's much less "fuelish" than our conifers, so it's good to break up the continuity of fuels that the conifers present. And too, those areas of gold that we'll be seeing in a month or so are pretty spectacular and nice breaks in an otherwise solid green landscape. But up close, many stands of aspen still strike me as weak and ugly.

But Boulder (like Portland and other such places) is capitol city of hippie, new age, weird thinking. (There's a huge campaign to save the prairie dogs on open ground that will be developed--rodents that strip the ground of vegetation are seen as adorable and needing protection--but don't get me started.) So I wonder if this protect-the-delicate-aspen-at-all-costs isn't another symptom of Boulder-itis. A gov't guy once told me that any bark-wound to aspen might doom the tree, yet bears and moose chew on them all the time.

 

[TheJollyLogger]

Gotta love Boulder county...

 

[old CB]

I feel fortunate to live six miles uphill from town--the city of Boulder is nuttier still. They (city & county both) think the bicycle is the answer to the world's problems. Last year the city took a busy four-lane street and reduced it to one vehicular lane each way and enlarged the bike lane--THAT WAS ALREADY THERE--and called it "right-sizing." That lasted all of six weeks before public outrage forced them to undo it.

 

[TheJollyLogger]

In answer, I could see a case for live stems, but definitely not dead.

 

[old CB]

Jolly,

That was pretty much my thinking.