Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, April 23, 1993 TAG: 9304230064
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Ed Shamy
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
In 1991, Hopkins had won permission from the state Transportation Department to plant trees in the Interstate 581 cloverleaf at Peters Creek Road.
An anti-turf-grass zealot, Hopkins can launch into a well-rehearsed tirade against lawn mowers. It's silly to fire up a combustion engine once a week to mow grass on open land - polluting in the name of greenery, he argues.
He believes in planting trees and wildflowers and other gentle chlorophyll factories that don't require such intense maintenance.
For Earth Day 1991, Hopkins planted 1,000 white pine trees in the highway cloverleaf. He planted the tiny seedlings in the shape of a star, 400 feet in diameter.
The pines were to grow in the shape of a star and would be visible from airplanes coming to and leaving nearby Roanoke Regional Airport.
The Star City. Evergreens instead of forever mowing. It sounded like an environmentally nifty scheme.
But by Earth Day 1992, though, most of the cloverleaf pines were dead; Hopkins replanted 800 of them.
By late 1992, most of the trees were, again, dead.
Figuring the white pines for wimps, Hopkins planted loblolly pines - 800 of them.
By Earth Day 1993, the mortality rate was again high.
Even those that have survived aren't healthy. They look more like freshly groomed poodles' tails - foot-long seedling stalks topped by a single tight-fisted ball of short, yellowing needles.
White pines, prized for their long needles and their quick growth, have found the cloverleaf a graveyard - almost 2,600 have perished there.
It is Lewis Hopkins' theory that the trees are dying because they are inhaling fumes.
Prevailing westerly winds sweep carbon monoxide from the tailpipes of I-581 traffic, he reasons, directly into his doomed seedlings.
They're our canaries in a coal mine, and they're dying. It's a sobering concept for the day after Earth Day.
Rob Trickel, who keeps an eye on trees in Roanoke County for the state Department of Forestry, confirms that white pines "are a signal tree when it comes to pollution problems."
But he says there are lots of factors that could be mass murdering the Hopkins pines.
When the highway was built 25 years ago, bulldozers and trucks probably carted away the best topsoil from the site and crushed what barren dirt was left.
Mice and rabbits could be gnawing at the young trunks. Weeds could be shading them. A couple of years ago, a buffer of white pines along the highway near Orange Avenue was being savaged by hungry pine sawfly larvae.
"There are lots of things that could be killing those trees," said Trickel. "But I did think his star was a good idea."
Indeed, the land within that exit-ramp loop has been paved with Lewis Hopkins' good intentions.
Sometimes, even on Earth Day, those are not enough.
by CNB