welcome to jerome arizona a town that 70
years ago was literally sliding down the
mountain jerome arizona's located at
five thousand feet elevation overlooking
the verde valley and sedona arizona this
city was founded in the late 1800s
because of the copper mine you can see
the tailings pile right here it was an
incredible boom town at one point there
were over ten thousand workers living in
this town and working in the mines you
had people actually sleeping in shifts
it was packed and it was a rootin tootin
shootin cowboy town and jerome's
reputation
for boozing brawling and brotheling
earned it the nickname the wickedest
town in america as you can see this town
is built on the side of a steep mountain
and all of the mining and the blasting
and everything over years and
underground tunnels and also the smelter
smoke killing the vegetation the
tailings piles right this land was just
destroyed
but around the 1920s because
the hillside was so de-vegetated the
town
literally started to slide down the
mountain there's a jail here it's called
the sliding jail and the sliding jail
actually slid 200 feet down the mountain
before it finally stopped and then the
mine shut down in 1953 and the
population declined all the way from 10
000 at its peak to about 100 people
so the mayor of this town had an idea to
try to stop the town from sliding down
the mountain the mayor got hold of a 40
pound bag of seeds from the chinese tree
of heaven atlantis altissima so the
mayor went up
in the airplane
with a 40-pound sack of atlanta's seed
and flew over the town and dropped the
seeds all over the town and the tree
took root and it basically anchored the
town in and rescued the town
now this tree
this is a it's a terrible tree i mean it
is considered
one of the most
invasive exotic species in north america
it has a horrible odor when you crumple
up the leaves it smells like a skunk
it sends out these really aggressive
lateral roots so it basically kills
other plants growing around it
and each female tree in a year can put
out as many as 300 000 seeds
so these seeds go and they blow all over
and they get in the cracks between the
pavement and they find their way in and
then they root and then they just start
to bust up the pavement this tree it's a
it's a town-destroying tree but in this
case the tree actually saved the town so
these trees basically destroy sewer
lines they destroy septic systems if you
cut the tree down it vigorously sprouts
again from the roots so you can't cut it
down
you can barely poison it i mean it's so
aggressive that you just it's really
hard to kill even though it's called the
tree of heaven
many gardeners refer to it as the tree
of hell
also the tree is this terrible fire
danger because they grow up and then
they die
and then they kind of fall over in the
drainages here and they just create
these like big mess of dead wood that's
basically in the washes ready to you
know ready for a wildfire to just move
up the drainage they can grow in super
low ph super acidic ph so the tree could
actually grow
in the tailings pile from the mine the
ecological devastation of this mine was
intense
but here we have this incredibly
invasive tree that could thrive
in these incredibly
toxic and erosive conditions now the
interesting thing is the chinese tree of
heaven is highly revered in chinese
medicine
as a cure for impotence it replenishes
skin and muscles
it boosts a person's chi
it brightens the eyes and it makes one
wise and intelligent so they can foresee
the future so invasive species
right people have a lot of feelings
about invasive species and people have a
lot of really bad feelings about this
tree the tree of hell but i've got to
say
in this case
this provided the biological solution
for a catastrophe for this town so the
benefit or the harm
of an invasive species
really actually has to do with context
because this hated tree in this case
was the hero of the day so maybe
ailanthus this tree that's supposed to
give us a vision of the future is giving
us a vision of the future where we can
use biological solutions to solve
human-made problems
that's the take-home right there
that's the take-home