HURON – It’s possible as many as 300 more trees will dot the Huron landscape by this weekend.
They’ll be small for now – like the little hands of the eight-year-olds who are planting them – but in the not-too-distant future they will tower over the city and countryside.
Those hands belong to Huron’s public and private school third-graders, in a decades-old Arbor Day tradition that will benefit them, their children and grandchildren.
When J. Sterling Morton pulled up his Pennsylvania stakes and moved to Nebraska in the early 1870s, it was obvious to him that his new state had an immediate need.
“The first thing he did was he started planting trees,” retired state forester John Hinners said at an Arbor Day program for 200 third-graders at Madison 2-3 Center on Thursday. “For the first Arbor Day, he planted over one million trees.”
Before they took root, grew tall and provided the wood the pioneers needed to build their homes, the first settlers of the plains used prairie sod to fashion places to live and survive in the harsh climate.
Unlike other holidays, Arbor Day is unique in that it began here and spread to more than two dozen other countries around the world. Depending on climate and the suitable planting season, it’s observed at different times of the year. It always falls on the last Friday of April in South Dakota, but in Hawaii it’s in the fall.
“Arbor Day has moved around depending on when you can plant a tree and expect that tree to grow and survive,” Hinners said.
One-foot-tall Black  Hills spruce seedlings went home with Madison third-graders on Thursday, and will go home with third-graders from Holy Trinity Catholic School and James Valley Christian School today.
For 33 years, Hinners and LaRon Klock, director of the Huron Parks and Recreation Department, have been talking to kids about the importance of planting and taking care of trees. Many of the trees they have distributed each April are now part of Huron’s urban forest.
The small trees have been planted in rural shelterbelts as well.

Their annual presentations educate the kids about the best way to plant their seedlings, how to protect them from what Hinners calls the “Deadly D’s” and where not to plant them to avoid problems when they grow much taller.
Klock said trees should not be planted under or near overhead power lines. They should stay a good distance away from houses and garages and should never be planted in the boulevard, particularly near intersections. Kids riding their bikes and people driving vehicles can’t see through evergreen trees, he said.
The spruce trees now going into the ground will grow to a height of 60 feet, with a canopy diameter of 30 feet.
“That’s a pretty good-sized tree, isn’t it?” Hinners said.
The root system will expand out 360 degrees around the tree to keep it nourished and to stabilize it as it grows, he said. Root systems go out one and a half times the height of the tree.
“So if the tree is 10 feet tall, the root system’s out how far?” he asked. “Fifteen feet, right?”
The young trees are susceptible to those three deadly D’s of dogs, deer and dad, Hinners said. Dogs like to use them as fire hydrants, deer clean their velvet off their antlers by rubbing against them and dads – or, the individual in the household who mows the lawn – tend to run over them because they’re hard to see at first.
The No. 1 killer of little trees in South Dakota is the lawn mower, he said.
To protect their seedling, Hinners recommended that the kids ask their folks to buy a cardboard carton of milk or orange juice, cut the top and bottom off and place it around the tree.
“The milk carton will help keep this thing a little more visible to whoever walks around with the lawn mower and doesn’t mow it off,” he said.
Tires are not a good idea because they retain water.
“Do you want to have a mosquito farm?” Hinners asked. “Then don’t put a tire around the tree.”
A third grader wanted to know how long her tree was likely to live.
The record for longevity of a Black Hills spruce in South Dakota is 256 years, he said. Worldwide, the honor goes to Old Methuselah, at 2,500 years old and still growing.
“So there’s some longevity to these trees, right?” Hinners said.
But there’s no time like the present as far as planting them. Get them in the ground as soon as possible, he said.
“These little trees have been in a cooler all winter long and are ready to grow,” he said.

PHOTOS BY ROGER LARSEN/PLAINSMAN
Retired state forester John Hinners shows a tree seedling to third-grade students at the Madison 2-3 Learning Center Thursday morning, in the annual Arbor Day program.

Next, Madsion third-grade students examine a cutting from the “Krutzfeldt Spruce” tree, which began as the same type of seedling that each of them took home at the end of Thursday’s Arbor Day program at the school. Two years ago, the tree was cut down and was donated to become the State Capitol Christmas Tree.