These are depressing images that I see on my daily tour of the city.

I see bare or partially leafless skeletons, with burst bark and broken branches, about every third young tree is dead or about to die.

The pitiful condition of the street trees is best seen on busy streets, the regular intervals between the plantings are being interrupted more and more frequently, whole streets have turned into a single row of stumps in the middle of parched lawns.

And the screeching of the chainsaws has only just begun.

Andrew Frey

Freelance author in the science section of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sunday newspaper.

  • Follow I follow

What is to blame for the death of the trees?

Disease, drought, climate change?

No, mainly another phenomenon, for which humans are also responsible: inadequate care.

A young tree that is not allowed to grow up in the forest, wonderfully sheltered by large trees, is directly exposed to pollutants and heat.

In addition, its roots first have to grow deep into the ground in order to find enough water under extreme conditions like this summer.

Therefore, a small tree needs sufficient care in the first three years: water especially during the most intense dry periods, pruning if the crown develops crookedly, and white paint or bamboo mats to prevent sunburn.

"It's really a shame"

But there is a huge lack of care in this country, especially when it comes to irrigation.

Daniela Antoni, tree expert from Stockstadt near Aschaffenburg, confirms this impression.

"What I see every day is really a shame," she wrote to me last Friday.

Hardly a new planting of the last few years survives the summer, the loss rate is really high.

She estimates that out of a hundred new plantings, at most thirty will survive, at most in the big cities only every second young tree will have to suffer.

Official numbers are collected locally at best, there is no kind of forest condition report for street trees.

For Daniela Antoni, one of the reasons why the trees are dying is the notorious understaffing of the green space offices.

But of course drought and sinking groundwater levels do not make survival in urban zones any easier.

But Antoni also gives legal reasons for the serious problems with youngsters.

Anyone who cuts down an old tree often has to plant a new one, but in Germany you usually don't have to take care of the green offspring.

The result: New plantings are dying and the old trees, often felled under questionable circumstances, are gone.

At the end of the day, a place has one tree less and whole streets are thinning out.

Added to this are the costs for a new tree, she explains, which add up to four figures in the purchase price.

"Endless tax money is lost."

But fewer trees are exactly the opposite of what we need in cities in the face of climate change.

It has to be green and shady so that the following generation can still live well in the concrete and asphalt deserts that we call cities.

The basis for this must now be laid so that the new growth can grow into the giant trees that we are so thoughtlessly felling today.

But I doubt anything will change.

City green is still perceived as a side issue that creates work and leaves parked cars dirty - every parking space is better taken care of.

And really, the people in my neighborhood are only concerned that parking spaces will be preserved.

No one cares about trees.