Nailed! Trees in city nursing wounds

IF ONE happens to visit District Collectorate, one finds some big trees giving shade to visitors. At the same time, one also notices that some boards carrying necessary instructions for visitors are nailed into the trunk of these trees. A sensitive person can feel the pain that the trees have been enduring with nails into their body. But, is this the case with District Collectorate alone?

Not at all. A careful look at trees in the premises of various Government offices, and also along the important roads in the city, reveal that the problem is widespread. In fact, as nails reflect the health of a person, the nails into tree trunks reflect the lack of awareness about environment in a city. As far as Nagpur is concerned, it is on fast track of growth and development, but it appears that it is also on the fast track of environmental deterioration. Most people tend to think that nailing the tree trunk is not such a big issue. But, they are not aware of the ill-effect that a nail can have on a tree. If one goes by Botany in general, the outermost part of the tree trunk is Bark. Under the bark, the next layer is of Phloem. Under the Phloem is Cambium.

Then comes Xylem, and the innermost layer is called Heartwood. The core part of Heartwood is known as Pith. People hammer a nail deep inside through the Bark of a tree, not knowing the impact of ‘just one or two nails’. The layers of Phloem and Xylem are critical to a tree’s survival. In layman’s terms, Xylem carries water and minerals absorbed by tree’s root systems to various parts of the tree and Phloem facilitates circulation of food component prepared using the nutrients through photosynthesis at the level of leaves. If ‘just one or two nails’ are hammered into a tree trunk deep enough to damage the layers of Xylem and Phloem, one can easily imagine the havoc it may wreak for tree’s survival. But, one may argue that many trees are surviving with nails for long enough.

Even if a tree is strong enough not to die because of nails, it may eventually dry up. The problem is not only restricted to nails used to hang a board displaying instructions for visitors or advertising a product or an organisation. At many places, one can see unidentified people actually penetrating even iron bars so deep into a tree trunk that one feels as if these people have cruelly stabbed the trees. Right in front of the Purnachandra Buty Hall of Rashtrasant Tukadoji Maharaj Nagpur University (RTMNU), a roadside small mechanic has hammered several nails into the trunk of the big tree to hang the tools.

There are places, where one can see wires tied very tightly to tree trunks. Gradually, as the girth of the tree grows around the wire gets into inner layers of the tree’s system and produce the poisoning effect. Nails are actually the tools to poison the trees, or create toxicity in them. Nagpur Municipal Corporation (NMC) had implemented a drive to remove the nails from trees and roped in some non-Government organisation (NGO) to create awareness. However, as has been the past experience, the drive proved to be short-lived. NMC staff and NGO members got their photographs published for a while.

Then, NMC stopped giving information about action taken on day-to-day basis under the all-important drive, to the media. Meanwhile, the mute beings called trees continue nursing their wounds daily... till their last breath. If NMC or any organisation cannot do it on a sustained basis, it is for the saner people to take upon themselves to -- first prevent hammering a nail into a tree for any reason, and second remove such nails whenever and wherever they notice it. For, such a participation of people also will help a lot in contributing to the cause of saving the green cover of the city of Nagpur.