About 100 trees being raised to replace those destroyed on the Mississippi Gulf Coast by Hurricane Katrina have fallen victim to drought and heat.
"Some of our trees were simply too stressed out by the heat and the lack of rain," said Bettie Pruitt, the urban forester for the city of Horn Lake, which had undertaken the reforestation project.
Project officials feel good about the surviving trees, which will be ready for transplanting in their new homes as early as October.
"Altogether, we've lost about 100 trees, but those that made it through the summer seem to be pretty hardy," Pruitt said.
The city is growing the hardwood trees as replacements for trees lost as a result of the Aug. 29 storm.
The seedlings were made available through a grant from the Mississippi Forestry Commission.
Pruitt said a number of Mississippi communities, including Horn Lake and Hernando, are growing replacement trees for the municipalities in Jackson, Hancock and Harrison counties - the three coastal counties hardest hit by Katrina.
"All of those communities need replacement trees," she said. "We will have some ready to be transplanted ... when the trees become dormant, but others may need to continue growing here until October of 2007."
Pruitt said the city is growing ash, river birch, oaks and elm trees primarily, with a few yellow poplars and other varieties.
"The river birches and the ash trees are fairly fast-growing varieties," she said.
While the leaves of some trees had been eaten by insects, Pruitt said that was a natural part of tree growth.
"We could spray, but it's better if the tree can cope with a regular environment," she said. "That's part of the toughness the trees need to develop to survive."
Joy Anderson, a horticulturist at the Mississippi State University extension service, said people should be careful about the way the trees are handled in transplanting.
"Some education is needed. People should learn proper pruning methods, for example. That would give the trees a much better chance for weathering bad storms," she said.
Anderson said Mississippi's forests that were struck by hurricanes Katrina and Rita "are already coming back."
"The parents may have been killed off, but they left seeds behind that are already coming up.
"It's Mother Nature's way of dealing with big storms."Associated Press via Clarion Ledger
