Episode 2 transcript: Noticing the living city

This is episode 2: Noticing the living city

Maya Lach-Aidelbaum: The human world is a stressful place right now. We're dealing with crises around the globe — war, violent conflict, climate change, the list goes on. No wonder we have high levels of eco-anxiety and political anxiety. We're simply overloaded by stressful messages.

In this episode, we ask: how can trees help us here? I know, it might seem strange to think about trees when trying to cope with global crises. But research actually finds that people are able to find a place of well-being and experience reduced anxiety in their worst moments when they find connection with the non-human world.

Trees are part of this, and that well-being increased when people know more about the non-human world. For example, knowing how to identify different plant species. The more you know, the more well-being you can find.

I'm Maya Lach-Aidelbaum, and I'm a master's student in media studies at Concordia University interested in our relationship to urban spaces and the environment.

In this episode, we'd like to help you better notice, understand and connect with the trees around you. We'll hear from a researcher and professor at the Loyola College for Diversity and Sustainability. She'll introduce us to some of the trees and birds we interact with in an urban context in the hopes that you'll also be able to find some peace when you need it through a little bit of learning about our natural environment.

Rebecca Tittler: I'm Rebecca Tittler. I work and teach at the Loyola College for Diversity and Sustainability here at Concordia University. I'm a biologist by training, and I have a particular interest in urban biodiversity and the urban forest because that's where we live, that's where our students are and that's where we connect the most with the natural world.

We're really lucky here in Montreal that we have a diversity of trees in our streets, on our front yards, in our parks — pretty much across the city. People notice how big they are.

Trees really provide us with shade in the summer. They shelter us from the storms in the winter. Some of our trees are really quite old.

You can notice things about the bark — about the leaves. Most people identify trees through the leaves, which is a little bit problematic in a place where I feel like it's winter most of the time, and a lot of our trees lose their leaves in the winter. We do need to start thinking about bark, about the shape of the tree as well. Some trees are really easy to identify based on the shape.

Here in the City of Montreal, I also tell students to look for spray paint because the trees that have been painted are usually ash trees. If they are painted with an orange stripe, then they're going to be cut down because they're infected with the emerald ash borer, which is an invasive insect here.

If they have blue or green spots on them, it's because they're being treated to prevent the ash borer. It's an easy way — if you're in the forest, you will not be able to use this trick. But in the City of Montreal, you can identify an ash based on the spray paint.

There are tricks for all different kinds of species. Usually, a beech tree, which looks kind of like an elephant's leg, has somebody's initials carved into it. They have particularly smooth bark — they grow very slowly. If you carve your — I'm not saying you should do this, it does damage the tree — but if you carve your initials into a beech tree, it will last for a long time. They tend to have big carvings.

If you're in the City of Montreal, there's a really easy trick, which is that the City of Montreal has a publicly available database called kbo.ca. It's a Google Map you can find your tree if it's a street tree. This is a great way to start — find a tree that is next to the sidewalk, and you can look it up and find out what kind of tree it is. That will help you to start.

Then, notice things about the leaves. How do you know that that is that species of tree. Notice things about the leaves if it's summer or if it's winter and it has leaves. Notice things about the bark structure. Notice things about the shape of the tree.

In the winter, you can look at whether the tree has leaves or not. We know the difference between conifer trees that keep their needles like Christmas trees. Pine trees or spruce trees that keep their needles in the winter, and deciduous trees that mostly lose their leaves in the winter, like maple trees. But there are also deciduous trees that keep their leaves in the winter, like oak trees. And there are coniferous trees that lose their leaves in the winter that are native, like the tamaracks.

It's the winter and you see a deciduous tree that's full of brown, crinkled leaves — you don't have to look further to know that's an oak.

We also have — apart from trees — we have birds here year-round that we can identify. Most of our birds do fly south for the winter, but we have a fair number of species that are here in the winter — black-capped chickadees, cardinals, nuthatches, all kinds of woodpeckers. There are owls in the city.

In the winter, birds tend to be less particular about the kinds of trees that they use. In the summer, when they're nesting, they do have preferences. Cardinals don't nest high up in trees, it's the robins who will nest in your maple tree, for example. Cardinals are much more likely to nest in your cedar hedge.

In the winter, the birds will find shelter when it's cold. They'll be more likely to be up at the tops of trees singing when it's sunny. Today is a beautiful sunny day in Montreal in February. The black-capped chickadees are at the tops of the trees singing their spring song. They think spring is coming — it's a very hopeful sound. If you notice that, it brings a little joy to your heart, a little hope to your heart this time — this tiny little bird that's singing spring is coming.

And it's a song that sounds like spring is here. It goes:

[whistling sound]

For me, personally when I'm feeling overwhelmed, it does help to stop and think about particularly a big, old tree. Think about all of the things the world has gone through during the lifetime of that tree, and that tree is doing just fine despite it all.

I also find it really useful, and others as well, if you close your eyes and just listen to hear if you can hear any birds. You usually can, we usually don't notice them, and it's like a little secret that everyone else is walking around not noticing the birds. But if you are, it does bring a little bit of joy, a little bit of peace to know that the birds don't really care what happened in the latest election or what's going on in the world. They are affected, obviously, but they're not really worried about it.

The birds help the trees by dispersing their seeds. And the squirrels as well disperse seeds and plant them. We see birds planting things all fall. They're planting acorns, etcetera. They're growing trees and also storing up food for the winter, potentially. We do see that, that interconnection as well. The birds are important for the trees. The trees are probably more important for the birds than the birds are for the trees, to be honest. And trees are more important to us than we are to trees as well.

Most of the trees in the city have been planted by us, but only because we cut down the trees that were originally here. The trees are not dependent on us for almost anything, but we are dependent on trees and plants in general for the very oxygen that we breathe.

Trees also sequester and store the carbon, so they're helping to mitigate climate change. They provide us with all kinds of resources from building material to food, and they bring us peace and well-being, among a multitude of other ecosystem services that they provide like flood control, erosion control.

We just planted, I believe, 1,400 new trees on campus, which more than doubles the number on campus. We're very, very excited. We want a diversity of trees, and not all native trees do well in the cities. And with climate change, there are some trees that typically grow a little bit further south than here, but we wanted to see if they'll do better up here as the climate warms.

There are a few non-native species and mostly native species. The most common tree on campus, I believe, is still the Norway maple, but we're not planting those anymore. We're planting — I was very excited to see that we now have at least to beech trees on campus. Beech trees are native species, but they don't really do very well in cities typically. We planted one a few years ago in a very protected place on campus, and there's now at least one other one — a fresh, new, tiny tree in the back of campus where it's particularly sheltered.

We've planted a diversity of conifers, as well as deciduous trees — so really quite a few species of trees on campus now. Again, mostly native to this area, some native to a little bit further south to see how they do. And we're going to be studying and monitoring how they do and how they do together and how that community of trees grows.

We have students doing work every year, for example — measuring the trees, calculating how much carbon they're storing. And we're going to keep doing that on these new trees so we can an idea of how that community is doing.

The trees that do well in cities are adapted to wetlands often, or very poor soil conditions — low oxygen soil conditions. Because our city trees, the roots experience high levels of compaction. The roots go underneath the sidewalks, underneath the roads. Those soils underneath the roads and underneath the concrete are low oxygen and compacted — they're very tight.

These days, we tend to think about — we have a lot of anxiety around the future. What will the world look like? It can be really reassuring to look at trees that have been planted — that are protected — and think about the positive that we might see in the future and how that will grow and evolve.

When you're feeling anxious, when you're feeling depressed, when you're feeling nervous about the state of the world, just stop for a moment and notice something about the world that is not human. The sun rises every day, and its sets every day. The trees are there; the birds are there. It helps us to get outside of our own heads a little bit and think about how the world exists without us — or with us as part of it, that we really are part of it.

Maya Lach-Aidelbaum: That's a wrap on the second episode of our walking tour. Thanks for joining us to connect with our local trees and birds. I hope you'll start recognizing some of the tree species we pass by every day in the city.

Next, we'll explore research happening right here at Concordia's Loyola Campus, uncovering the best strategies for greening the city.