"THURSTON ACKERMAN" wrote in
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FamilyNet Newsgate

=?One of my neighbours at the back has a huge maple (not a sugar maple).
=?The tree looks healthy has a nice shape and is full of leaves, but at a
=?slight wind it loses small branches. Today, I gathered, on our lawn, 2
=?small buckets of these branches. These branches have 3 to 10 leaves on
=?them and they are very green and big. There was a breeze but not strong
=?enough to move plastic trays for plants that I was washing outside.

=?Is it natural for a maple to lose so many small branches? I do not
=?recall seeing this before even in a big wind.

Where is this tree located? The females of the 17-year cicadas, Brood X, in
the Eastern USA are right now pruning the crowns of trees by slitting the
small uppermost branches to lay eggs. The breaking off of the small branches
is how the next generation of cicadas gets down to the ground, where they
will burrow in and suck tree roots for the next 17 years. Our lawn in a Blue
Ridge clearing is covered with chestnut oak, white oak, black cherry, maple
and other fronds. Looking at the huge crowns of the oaks, 80-90 feet up, you
can see dozens more pieces where the twigs are almost broken through, about
read to fall.