Houston Chronicle by Diane Cowen 7/30/2021
Zombies are in your yard, in parks and along roadsides and other green spaces throughout Texas.
They’re trees that are partly dead and partly alive, struggling to move forward and waiting for the next big thing — even hotter temperatures, a drought, a hurricane — to seal their fate.
Count zombie trees as one more lingering effect of February’s winter storm
Arborists and other tree experts say that in the months to come, the state could lose thousands if not millions of trees ranging from tall Mexican or California fan palms to a wide range of hardwoods such as lace bark elm, Chinese tallow and water oak. This would be the most dangerous threat to Texas’s tree inventory since the 2011 drought.
Trees with lots of dead branches and new green sprouts shooting out of the center are likely zombie trees. Even tall palms with new green fronds on top could be zombies, because you can’t see the potential damage inside of their lanky trunks.
The freeze affected trees’ cambium layer — essentially their vascular system — just beneath the bark. That layer is responsible for taking water up to the branches to be converted to sugars through photosynthesis. If a tree is so damaged that it cannot do this, it cannot feed itself.
More:
https://www.houstonchronicle.com/lifestyle/home-garden/article/One-more-Texas-winter-storm-legacy-Zombie-trees-16350689.php
