TREE DAVIS … since we are the city of trees, it seems to me it’s about time we have a contest of some sort to identify the very best of the best so we all know where to look for — and enjoy — them … I mean, does anyone know which of the thousands and thousands of trees in town is the tallest? … the widest? … the rarest? … the farthest from its native home? … I don’t, though I occasionally marvel at the size and beauty and strangeness of some of them … I do know there’s a very tall, sidewalk-encroaching redwood tree on A Street that’s a wonder to behold, but there may be other redwoods or other species that are taller … I also know my next-door neighbor has the world’s largest sycamore tree, mostly because it drops half its leaves in our back yard every fall, much to the delight of the kids who share this humble home …

Perhaps we could break the contest down into Tallest Valley Oak, Most Brilliant Crape Myrtle, Perfect Persimmon, Most Productive Peach and so on … we could even share the results with the Yolo County Visitors Bureau and publish a map to make finding the trees easy on all our friends from Europe and Asia and Africa and Antarctica and Alabama who come to visit us … it’s about time we mine this city treasure for all it’s worth …

SPEAKING OF TREES … on the flip side of promoting our urban forest for all the world to see is the inescapable fact that trees need water to survive … and while most of us don’t intentionally and specifically water the trees in our yards, they do pick up a considerable amount of moisture when we simply water the lawn … as the price of water heads ever upward, perhaps tripling in the next few years, many people will cut back dramatically on their watering, if they water at all …

You can replace your lawn with rocks and wood chips and cactus if you like, but the trees that remain will still need water … how we plan to keep our treasured urban forest healthy when water rates skyrocket is a question that has yet to be answered … but if it’s not answered satisfactorily, over time the decline will start to show …

AGGIE UPDATE … the good news, UC Davis football fans, is that the vaunted Aggie offense has finally hit its stride, averaging a whopping 46.5 points a game over the last two contests … the bad news is that the Aggie defense has given up an average of — you guessed it — 46.5 points a game during the same span … and with No. 15 Northern Arizona on the docket this weekend and No. 1 Eastern Washington down the road, things aren’t going to get any easier … then again, nobody said the Big Sky Conference would be a walk in the park …

— Reach Bob Dunning at [email protected]

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