PHOTO BY OWEN O’ROURKE
City of Lynn tree warden Jason Dumas talks about the greenhouse at Pine Grove Cemetery.
By BRIDGET TURCOTTE
LYNN — Tiny insects, some no longer than an eighth of an inch, are killing trees in the Pine Grove Cemetery.
More than 5,000 trees, some up to 100-years-old, are threatened by a destructive inchworm and an aphid-like insect.
“Some of the older trees, because of their age, can’t stand up against them,” said Jason Dumas, the city’s tree warden and the cemetery’s greenhouse manager.
Among the threatened trees include the Norway Maple, Sugar Maple, Red Maple, Red oak, White Oak, Hemlock, Colorado Blue Spruce, and Evergreen.
The pests attack the buds and leave the branches weakened, causing branches to die.
This year, Dumas is spraying the trees with an environmentally-friendly horticultural mineral oil to combat fight the pests.
“We spray with the horticulture oil and they crawl through and it clogs the holes they use to breath,” he said.
The Cankerworm is one of the biggest threats. Today, the tiny caterpillars are about one eighth of an inch, but will soon grow to an inch long and eventually turn into moths.
About five worms can be found in a single bud, chomping away at the blossoming leaves. He estimates that there could be several thousand of the insects on each of the trees.
Hemlock Woolly Adelgid are attacking many of the hemlock trees on the property. These insects look like snow or cotton balls on the leaves. The insects are tough and typically feed during the wintertime.
The cemetery is having trouble combating the bugs this spring.
While the horticulture oil should destroy many of the insects, damage has already been done to several of the trees, Dumas said.
As Dumas works to defend the trees, it’s also a busy season for the three greenhouses, at the top of a hill in the cemetery.
Here, Dumas grows hundreds of plants and flowers to be planted at adopt-a-site garden beds around the city, including the yellow pansies in front of City Hall.
Maintaining the beds is a job that keep Dumas busy all season, he said.
Plants are also grown for the Perpetual Care graves throughout the park, which date back to the 1920s, when the cost was $60 for upkeep that would last for the life of the cemetery.
Perpetual Care graves are maintained by Dumas and the cemetery team. It began as a service where groundskeepers would plant elaborate gardens.
The service continues today, but the arrangements typically consist of pansies. The cemetery is bringing back the service with a cost of $500 for five years. It includes geraniums, pansies, and begonias, he said.
Bridget Turcotte can be reached at [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter @BridgetTurcotte