BonnerSprings.com

The week after many trees along Kump Avenue had their limbs cut off in preparation for a road-widening project, efforts began Monday to save what may be Bonner Springs' oldest tree.

At 209 W. Front St., otherwise known as the Fredrick House, neighbors and city staff noticed last week the appearance of a split down the middle of the trunk of the burr oak.

Mary Redmond and Dwight Dewey, owners of the house, decided to get a second opinion after one tree service advised them to cut down the approximately 65-foot-tall tree.

They got a second opinion from Brad Hatfield, consulting arborist for Van Booven Tree Service of Edwardsville, who told them it would be worthwhile to try saving the tree, which measures 15 feet in circumference.

"I think with a historic tree like this, people should make every effort at preservation," Hatfield said. "I'd hate to see it taken down."

So on Monday morning, Van Booven employees began preparing to install five cables to connect the two sides of the tree and prevent the trunk split from becoming larger.

That part came only after Van Booven employee Sergio Herrera, hoisted aloft in a large bucket by a truck's 60-foot hydraulic arm, cut off about 5,000 pounds of deadwood from the tree using a chainsaw, hand saw and a curved saw at the end of a long pole.

Sawing off the deadwood removed much of the weight that was contributing to the split.

That work took most of the morning, and after lunch Chris Brewer, supervising arborist, tethered to a rope looped over one of the tallest limbs, climbed up the tree with no other special equipment - real arborists don't use spikes, he said -to partner with Herrera in installing cable trusses between major sections in the top two-thirds of the tree's canopy.

The half-inch cables - twice as thick as the ones usually employed for the same purpose - are connected to bolts driven through drilled holes, anchored on the opposite site by large washers and a nut.

The wood eventually grows over and around the washer, Brewer said.

The trussing won't close the tree's split, and it's not intended to, Brewer said. That's because to make the cables "banjo-tight," he said, would cause too much stress to the tree.

As the tree stood before the cables were installed, its two sections had more or less settled as separate structures, Hatfield said. The cables simply serve to connect the two to keep them from further separating, he said.

The damage was not caused by a lightning strike, contrary to common assumptions about such splits, Brewer said.

"It's almost always wind or snow," he said. "It's real common."

The sad part, both he and Hatfield said, was that the split could have been averted 20 years ago through trimming and installing cables.

Dewey and Redmond bought the 100-year-old Fredrick House five years ago and renovated it to make office space, including for their company, Independent Lease Review.

When they were asked to make the decision whether to save the tree or cut it down, Redmond said, "I was crying. That tree's been here forever."

"We like trees," Dewey said. "It's a real classic. We'd rather spend money to try and save it."

Dewey said he'd been told that Front Street's path had been altered when the road was going to be widened many years ago so that the tree would not have to be cut down.

Redmond said she'd been talking to staff with the Kansas State University forestry department, who she said became indignant when informed she'd been advised to cut it down.

Redmond and Dewey said they'd heard the tree could be as old as 400 years, and Hatfield said he'd understood a K-State tree survey had put it at about 380 years about 20 years ago.

Hatfield said he thought the tree was closer to about 250 years old.

When they first noticed the split, Redmond said, "you couldn't see daylight through the crack."

But on Monday, the split appeared to be at least a couple of inches wide.

Without the cabling, Hatfield said the tree would "probably be just one severe storm away" from toppling.

Hatfield said he couldn't guarantee the tree's survival, but he was optimistic.

So was Brewer.

"I've got a good feeling about the old fart," he said, after coming down from installing the last of the cables.

Lending to his optimism was the fact that he and Herrera found no hollow limbs where they drilled.

After installing the cables, an expanding, waterproof foam was sprayed into the trunk split to protect the wood from moisture and pests and would be painted over to match the color of the trunk. The foam will have to be reapplied every couple of years, Brewer said.

"This is probably one of the bigger trees we've done," Hatfield said.

As Brewer had predicted, when they were installed, the cables were not noticeable until one looked for them high in the tree.

"It's a grand old tree," Dewey said.