Welcome to the New Plant Health Care Services
If you are seeing this, you have found the brand new home of Plant Health Care Services online. Along with a fresh website, there is a new logo and a new place to share what makes trees and plants so fascinating to work with. Thanks for stopping by.
To kick things off, here is something that sits at the heart of what an arborist pays attention to, and it is smaller than you might expect. The humble twig.
A twig might look like just the end of a branch, but it is actually a detailed blueprint of a tree’s health and history. Take a close look and it tells a story.
The buds are the engine of growth. The terminal bud at the tip drives the branch longer, while the lateral buds along the sides form new branches.
The scars are a record of the past. Leaf scars mark where last year’s leaves fell, and bud scale scars show where past seasons of growth began. Count them and you can read the years.
The inner workings carry the life of the tree. The pith at the center moves nutrients, and tiny pores called lenticels let the twig breathe.
Why does any of this matter? Because a twig is full of clues. The arrangement of the buds, alternate or opposite, and the shape of the pith help identify a tree species even in the dead of winter when there is not a leaf in sight. And the condition of the twigs can be an early warning sign. Weak, spindly growth can signal stress from too much shade, disease, or other trouble long before the rest of the tree shows it.
That is the kind of detail that goes into every assessment at Plant Health Care Services, reading the small signs to understand the bigger picture of a tree’s health.
Have a tree you are wondering about? Reach out anytime. I would love to take a look.
Will Mellott
Plant Health Care Services
(509) 499-5308
