PORT ANGELES – The mammoth madrona of Eighth Street – the state’s largest – is sick, but it still has plenty of power to bring people together.
“Ted’s tree,” as the roughly 400-year-old madrona is known, rises 85 feet over Eighth Street in Port Angeles., just east of Cherry Street.
It is the biggest madrona in the state, according to the state Department of Resources.
It’s named after the late Ted Serr, who drove past it daily for 20 years. His widow Virginia bought the small lot at 231 W. Eighth St. in 1999 and had the “Ted’s Tree Park” sign erected last September.
But the madrona’s roots have become infested with two kinds of deadly fungi, identified as phytophthora and basidiomycetes.
Tree specialists from around the Pacific Northwest heard about Ted’s tree, and they were determined to save it.
Olaf Rubeiro – a Bainbridge Island resident, who is a Portuguese-Indian named after the king of Denmark – is the leader of the pack of arborists and other scientists who came here to practice root medicine.
At his home laboratory, Rubeiro studies fungi and develops treatments for ailing trees around the world.
In many cases, he uses an “air spade,” a kind of weed whacker that clears soil without hurting a tree’s roots.
With him on Friday was Martyn Jack, a Federal Way-based landscape consultant with considerable air-spading experience.
The tool is also used to find land mines in Southeast Asia, Jack said.
Rubeiro’s tree therapy involved air-spading the soil beneath the madrona to expose the roots, injecting organic microbes that attack the fungi and excavating the decayed roots.
Providing the fungi-fighting micro-organisms was Nick Benovich of Port Orchard.
He runs a turf-cultivation business, The Lawn Jockey, but like Jack and Rubeiro, has a passion for big, old trees.
The men have seen microbial infusion save many diseased plants, from oaks to tomatoes. But Port Angeles’ giant presented them with a thorny challenge.
“We had to take a drastic approach to save it,” Rubeiro said.
When Jack, Rubeiro and their colleagues air-spaded the madrona’s roots on Friday morning, they found much more damage than they had expected.
The roots have been “sopping wet,” Rubeiro said.
The crew discovered a water pipe under the tree but couldn’t find the source of the excessive water – so the fungi flourished and killed much of the root system.
Yet another arborist working alongside Rubeiro is James Causton of Port Angeles.
Over many years, he’s watched the madrona grow larger – until overly moist soil and fungi endangered its life.
“When you get to anaerobic conditions,” in which the roots can’t breathe in oxygen, “you have a lit fuse,” Causton said.
Yet Rubeiro believes the madrona can survive, just as other ill trees have.
He’s helped resurrect 1,000-year-old chestnuts in Britain, old orchards in California, a three-century-old oak in Alabama and numerous apple trees in eastern Washington.
For Port Angeles’ massive madrona, another 200 years of life “is no problem,” Rubeiro said.
“Time will tell . . . to get it to a thousand years would be great.”
On Friday, Benovich sprayed some 240 gallons of organic microbial therapy into the roots and onto the tree’s crown.
Jack air-spaded the soil and “got it nice and fluffy,” Ribeiro said, “so the roots are in a happy environment.”
Finally, to keep the soil from compacting around the roots – which would shut out air – his crew laid down porous lava rock.
Expenses from Friday’s work totaled $900 – a tiny figure compared with what it would cost if Rubeiro and the others got their usual fees.
Rubeiro charges $150 an hour, plus $75 for each test he conducts.
His recent treatment of an ailing Douglas fir in Seattle cost $18,000.
Sequim arborist Chris Austin came to Port Angeles Friday to work alongside the giants of his profession.
“I’m just here to help . . . and learn from Dr. Rubeiro. It’s a privilege to be able to preserve these large trees. They’re an important part of the city’s infrastructure.”
“There’s a desperate need for the public to understand the root-zone requirements,” Austin added.
When homes and subdivisions are built, contractors should mark tree protection zones so their heavy equipment doesn’t damage soil and roots, he said.
At the end of the day, Rubeiro declared this the most difficult project he’d ever worked on.
“There were so many decaying roots, and the soil was so wet,” he said.
The volunteer crew, however, buoyed him.
“I have great faith that this tree is going to look great in two to three years,” Rubeiro said.
He’s seen microbial treatment hasten many others’ recovery.
“There’s a lot of good karma coming from these people,” the tree doctor added, looking around at his fellow volunteers.
“There’s a lot of positive energy here.”
A KIRO-TV reporter from Seattle came to produce a feature, and marveled at the number of hours donated by the crew.
“Come here and stand under the tree, and you’ll understand,” Rubeiro told him.
