Special to the Times Vedette
Carolyn England submitted this photo of reddish-colored inner wood of what she believes is a cottonwood tree located just past the Lenon Mill Park bridge that was damaged in last week’s storms. She asked why it would have such red color inside the bark.
The best answer we could find relates to “tannins,” which are defense chemicals that plants and trees use for various purposes. Tannins bind to proteins making enzymes less effective, so they exist in plants and trees to make them less palatable to herbivores and also to make them more resistant to diseases. The tannin can appear red if it interacts with iron present in small amounts in the water a tree may absorb. High-tannin wood can still decay, but it does so slower because the fungi have to produce a lot more wood-digesting enzymes to overwhelm it, and that costs the fungi energy.