Less Grievous Evil

While strolling through my neighborhood park, I noticed something. It's to be expected that the trees would be defaced, but my experience has been that people carve things into them with a blade. It's downright romantic and acceptable sometimes, in fact. Part of growing up is announcing to everyone via tree trunk that you are in love with somebody, or so I have been led to believe. I never did do such a thing or directly bear witness to it. In any case, I was aware that it happens- with a blade, as I said. What I discovered was that it also happens with spray paint.

I was scandalized, of course. Who could commit such an atrocity, degrading the quality of our fair city's green space? I wondered this until my thoughts took a turn. Is it really worse? It's uglier to see graffiti on a tree, and I would be the first one to say so. What is worse where the tree is concerned, though? Beneath the bark is a kind of membrane which transports the tree's nourishment from ground up to the very top. It's very thin, and carving the tree punctures it. That's bad for the tree, and can kill it if carried to extremes. Romantic a heart with names in it may be when carved into a tree, but not environmentally friendly.

Whether the same thing in paint is better or worse in that regard I'm not certain, though it can't be as good as leaving the tree alone. I don't suppose the paint could really be free of toxins that particularly harm the tree, but it probably would do less damage to the tree itself in the short term. Ultimately, it seems to me that the effects of the pain would not be restricted to the one tree. Probably the contaminants would spread far and wide into the air and soil. Ultimately that would make the paint less desirable.

This is all conjecture, naturally. Probably an experiment is called for to find out the worse evil here. One might try both methods, each on a separate tree far distant from the other. The next obvious step would be to get the word out. There is no indication that people will ever successfully be induced into showing proper respect for such things as trees and bridges, so I guess the most we can hope for is to channel the inevitable into the least damaging actions.