Shaffer: City of Oaks lets sick tree wither

RALEIGH -- About seven years ago, the city delivered Joe Welch an oak sapling - a hopeful piece of greenery he could enjoy from the shade of his back deck.

Then six weeks ago, the leaves turned ghostly pale, falling and piling around the trunk until the sad-sack oak stood almost bare.

This, he learned, was the work of a diabolical worm, a speckled pest known as the oak skeletonizer - scourge of the Southeast.

But for Welch, the real shocker came when Raleigh explained the Catch-22 of its tree-planting program, Neighborwoods - rules that more or less require him to watch the tree wither.

"Slow and agonizing," he said of the experience.

Here's the gist: Through Neighborwoods, the city will plant a tree on the right-of-way along your property if you agree to water and mulch it for at least two years.

So far, Raleigh has added about 11,000 trees this way, a green and leafy accomplishment. Neighborwoods purchases all trees with donations. Bravo.

Until the tree gets sick.

Raleigh won't spray pesticides for any bug. Welch can hire someone to debug the 20-foot tree if he wants, at his own expense.

His response: "You mean you want me to pay to treat the city's tree?"

He can't cut it down. The city won't cut it down unless it poses an imminent threat.

Raleigh's advice to Welch: Wait until spring.

"We don't believe the tree is dying," said Sally Thigpen, urban forester with the city. "If it comes back and defoliates two or three or four growing seasons."

So, I'm trying to think of a parallel.

I buy you a bicycle for your birthday. The wheels fall off when you try to ride it, but I won't take it to the shop. Instead, I tell you to wait and see if the wheels reattach themselves. Sound about right?

Meanwhile, Welch worries that the oak skeletonizer will spread to every other tree on his street, which sits in far North Raleigh off Leesville Road. Anything with such a sinister-sounding name seems unlikely to stop at devouring a single oak.

"It got here from Texas," he said. "It's not going to stop at my tree."

Thigpen doubts this.

Raleigh hasn't seen a widespread outbreak of oak-eating worms. Trees they infect tend to leaf back out, and she fully expects Welch's to do the same.

They'll check come warmer months.

But it's a lonely autumn on Dry Fork Lane for the city's gift tree, standing skeletonized and publicly sick, hoping for spring.