Having attending many tree related enquiries over the years I have become attached to some of our repeat clients and more so, their trees. The yards and gardens of the Greater Brisbane suburbs support a fantastic array of diversity, both in plant and animal variation. Some of the older and leafier suburbs seem to have a recurring situation which rears itself every few years, depending on climatic conditions and dramatic changes in the local environment.
Some of our most valued clients and their amazing trees are situated in a suburb called Ashgrove, a well treed suburb in which Evergreen Tree Care has been conducting quality tree services in for many years. While conducting tree services in Ashgrove and returning to these properties to fulfil pruning programmes on clients’ trees, we have become proficient in dealing with a naturally existing problem, the possum. Now, we are a pro tree company with strong ties to sustainability and respect for nature and it is this ethos that sets us apart.
When rain hasn’t fallen for some time and the new guy moves in next door and denudes his property while the cold wind blows over another howling neighbourhood dog, the poor possum is trying to find a feed for their family. The possums then struggle as there is not much food on offer. Some trees, however, are a leafy evergreen that are usually a stocked larder for all mammals, birds, insects and reptiles.
The Mango tree has been giving us beautiful fruit every summer and its fruiting usually signifies warm weather ahead and long days enjoying the great outdoors. For the possum, this is great because their food stores just became abundant, enough to share and even enough to let fall on the ground with only a couple of bites taken out. But it is not always a roman feast for these native tree dwellers who have adapted so well to the laced networks of power lines and buzzing late night death traps on the streets below.
Cold weather and little rain during the non-fruiting season leave the possum to forage for food. Luckily the Mango tree has another supply of sustenance for the furry day sleeper. New buds and fresh leaves are a fall-back source of food for the possum. They will eat this when there is little else to be had. Who can blame them when urban sprawl and irresponsible governance does little to maintain their natural environment?
In some cases when climatic and season conditions change and human interaction is so dramatic, the possums are forced to remove nearly all the mango trees’ foliage. This can be detrimental to the tree and will often give the appearance that the tree is diseased or dying. Leaves on any tree are vital for their processing of gases, the creation of energy, transpiration and for shading. So when they are damaged their owners become nervous and rightly so.
The highly valued Mango tree is fairly robust and can handle most attempts at bridging the possum’s diet between the summer months. Sometimes though, if the tree keeper is not astute and their reaction is delayed by failing to give their favourite Mango tree a good winter hug from time to time, then problems can occur. Being proactive is the key to plant health success.
Evergreen Tree Care has been successfully conducting an assortment of tree services in Ashgrove to help manage the stresses that heavy possum grazing has on Mango trees. We have never resorted to capture and removal of the possum as we believe they have as much right to the trees as everyone. There are plenty of other techniques we apply so as to help the tree manage the grazing itself and supply the tree with plenty of nutrients so it can reproduce its canopy and continue to feed those hungry, hungry possums.
So as we enter another dry spell and we are increasingly affected by development and its removal of key habitat trees, please consider that an arborist company in Brisbane is conducting tree services in Ashgrove and beyond in an attempt to promote tree health and encourage native urban fauna and its habitat retention.
55 Hill End Terrace
West End QLD
0432 920 715
0414 815 688
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