It may feel like March, but bare branches stay safely dormant, forestry experts say
By JAMES RUSK | Globe and Mail
Tuesday, January 31, 2006 Page A9
Although Toronto is having its warmest January on record, the city's deciduous trees haven't been fooled. They have remained dormant throughout the month, which reduces the risk of damage if February turns in its usual frigid performance, says Richard Ubbens, Toronto's director of forestry.
"The concern for us is that you get nice weather and you get a hard, hard frost when the buds have already begun to flush or swell. That's when you can sometimes get quite a bit of damage and a lot of die-back," he said in an interview.
"It's too early to tell if we are going to get that. Right now, though, things are good and dormant still."
Temperatures recorded this month are usually felt in March, and the amounts of snow and rain are more like an average April, Environment Canada climatologist Dave Phillips said yesterday.
Through the first 29 days, the average temperature was zero, half a degree warmer than the record set in 2002, he said. And if today's high is more than zero as forecast, January will have had 26 days in which temperatures were above freezing, Mr. Phillips said.
It has been wet. Until yesterday, Toronto had received 64.4 millimetres of rain, more than twice the average of 24.9 millimetres, and 7.8 centimetres of snow, a quarter of the long-term average of 31.1 centimetres, Mr. Phillips said.
The wetness has been good for trees, Mr. Ubbens said. "Lots of water presence in the trees means that there's less chance of frost damage, because it is more water to freeze."
The wet, mild winter has also reduced the chance of salt damage to trees, he said, and not just because it means that the city and other municipalities use less salt.
The fine dusty salt that ends up on streets after they dry tends to blow onto trees and desiccate them, he said. But the rain has washed it off the trees and the ground, and "that's terrific."
Len Troup, a Jordan Station peach farmer who is chairman of the Ontario Tender Fruit Producers Marketing Board, echoed Mr. Ubbens's assessment of the weather's impact. "To this point, we're just fine. . . . It hasn't been extremely cold, and it hasn't been outlandishly warm. It's just been nice. Nice is okay. The secret is that our trees are still fully dormant.".
He noted that a peach tree has about a 45-day period when it has to be extremely dormant. The trees are in that stage. Once past that by mid-February, they will become more vulnerable to cold, he said.
Jim Gardhouse, a horticulturalist who is Toronto's parks supervisor, said that when he looked last week, some shrubs in city parks were "starting to push out a bit."
"They are still not in trouble," he said. "But if it continues to be warm and warmer and there's more rain . . . they will think it's spring. And they could, all of a sudden, get walloped, which will set them back."
The next few weeks are crucial. "We just need to get through the next three or four weeks and then we'll be okay, once you start getting into March," Mr. Gardhouse said.
