Old apple trees

Apple trees are known to have the longevity of humans.
If healthy and lucky, we can live a good 100 years.
Old apple trees are scattered through our landscapes in fields and along roadsides, remnants of old farm orchards. Some grizzled trees are improbably pumping out fruit from their surviving branches, providing windfalls for humans and wildlife. Withered trunks become hunting perches for birds of prey and resting posts for songbirds. Woodpeckers excavate crevices and provide the starter holes for cavity nesters such as bluebirds, wrens and owls.
As fungi work their way in through cracks and crevices to the heartwood, the tree trunk hollows out over time. This rot, called “heart rot,” becomes habitat. Habitat collects fertilizer and provides nutriments for the tree to continue to age and grow.
Old apple trees can withstand the hollowing out of 70 percent of their radius before the tree is significantly weakened. At that point, shearing stress caused by wind, water and decay can cause limbs to fall.
The old trees are devolving, becoming snags—wildlife hotels that provide refuge and sustenance for a myriad of species. They are also shape-shifting living sculptures.
The late Michael Phillips, organic apple grower and author of the book “Mycorrhizal Planet,” describes trees as the rising of the earth and all its biology. The old apple tree eventually dies, but is recycled back into what Phillips called “the outrageous diversity of living earth.”

This neglected old apple tree of more than 70 years still bears fruit.