Tender care for the endangered hemlock trees

The largest remaining Eastern hemlock trees in South Carolina got a dose of tender loving care when Duke Energy funded the treatment of trees along the Whitewater River in Oconee County to help the hemlocks in their battle against the deadly hemlock wooly adelgid. In the past 20 years, the wooly adelgid has decimated hemlocks across the Southern Appalachians. A group of arborists treated the hemlocks by soil injection with insecticides that are taken up by the trees’ vascular systems, killing the adelgids.