Jean Smart

Thanks for all the help.  Sycamore sounds good, just because I've never heard of it having any problems.  I was wondering about the oaks recommended though.  I was told by someone who is involved with a nature preserve, who said that basically, if any one moves anything with oak wilt on it into an area with oaks, it will kill them, no matter how healthy and old the trees are! If you have any further thoughts, let me know.  I know monocultures seem to START all the diseases, but I am not sure if, once started, it makes any difference.  I was interested by the poster's comment about ash borer not hitting scattered individual ashes.  Is that really true?  (I was given the impression by the same person that the ash borer is cyclical, and will not strike an ash tree right away, but will eventually strike the mature trees.  He kind of gave me the idea that the insects are attracted to find the specific trees, at their maturity, or in a certain number of years- I guess I just didn't get the impression that ANY would live without constant treatment)

I don't plan to ever cut the tree down for any reason.  Mostly I had a serious question- are there any trees today that will, without any care, survive to even half of their ages- SPECIFICALLY long lived trees.  In other words, are there any left that will realistically live at least 200 years when the given lifespan (not record breaking trees) is 400 years, or even longer?  Or live 300 years when it is generally said their lifespan is 600 years?  Just wondered.  I KNOW that many trees will live a long time with care, or be fine in their beginning 100 years or so, but I am thinking of something that is truly long lived, and will grow here in Michigan.  NOT interested in logging etc.  

I have found that the more I read about trees (native trees) the more frustrating it is to decide what to plant, because- it seems like every tree that I look into now has some disease that will wipe it out, shorten it's life, etc.  Birch, elm (dutch elm disease), oak (such as oak wilt), etc.  I was even looking into silver maple (since there is already one by me) and was amazed at the list of diseases that affect maples (even other kinds of maples).

I posted this mostly because I wanted to know if anyone else has felt this way- every tree book has a list of diseases and usually say something like "not recommended to plant" because of this or that problem.  What have people done to them? It seems like there are no trees left that will actually live to the lifespans listed in the books, without a lot of help.  I realize that many of them are still fine in perfect conditions and in prime growth, but my question is do ANY of them really live to the long ages anymore that they are supposed to?  I understand that when a books says "lives up to 400 years" or some other number, that most of them do not live quite that long, but with the list of diseases that now seem to threaten every tree, do any of them make it even to the halfway mark of that? Is there ANY tree I could plant NOW, (I live in lower peninsula of Michigan) that would actually make it a few hundred years?  Even just 200?  Realistically, without any additional care?  Has anyone looked into this?