It’s no surprise that the phrase “tree-lined street” dominates real-estate ads here and practically everywhere else in the country.

But try as I might to find the phrase “stump-lined road” in any advertisement designed to snag prospective home buyers, I come up empty-handed.

As hard as I scour the Internet, I can’t find one real-estate ad that reads something like: “Well-maintained Colonial on parched, sun-scorched street. Backyard stripped of all trees — perfect for children’s plastic swing set.”

I am surprised, not because I believe anyone would want to buy a home on a street devoid of trees, but because that is exactly the direction we are moving in unless common sense and some gutsy laws begin to prevail.

Since I returned to Cranston’s suburbs as an adult in the early 1980s, I have become more and more horrified at how many shade trees are disappearing from our side streets — most for no good reason.

“Trees are messy.”

“Its roots were going to damage the driveway.”

“I hate raking.”

“I wanted more room to plant flowers.”

What?

These are some of the reasons neighbors past and present have given for hacking down perfectly healthy trees on their property as well as trees that live on the grassy aprons along sidewalks and which are public property that individuals have no right to destroy.

I was somewhat heartened in 2004 when Cranston adopted a tougher ordinance to protect public shade trees, but my pessimism has returned as I’ve watched the ordinance turn out to be roundly ignored and difficult to enforce.

I tried to invoke the local law that imposes both financial penalties and the requirement of a replacement tree to fight a neighbor’s attempt to reduce a beautiful old sidewalk sugar maple to mulch.

Granted the tree was in its waning years and struggling, but it still lit gray autumn skies with fiery foliage, and according to my city’s own tree warden, had a 50-50 chance of surviving. Unfortunately, with neighbors putting on a full-court press for its demise (because its roots were in danger of disturbing a concrete driveway), those 50-50 odds actually translated into a death sentence for the tree.

And it is lack of logic like this that causes my home city’s landscape to change in a frightening way, with graceful old shade trees disappearing from the scenery to reveal denuded yards dotted only with small ornamental trees and shrubbery sculpted like poodles or soft-serve ice cream cones.

A drive down Dean Parkway, which was considered an untouchable sylvan sanctuary in my youth, shows that people have mowed down trees on public property to make room for more manicured (and miniature) landscaping. I can call City Hall when I see a tree going down (and I do), but usually by the time it’s been determined that the necessary permit is not in hand, the tree has been felled and my complaint is no more than a lone voice in the wilderness.

Through research, however, I have learned that I am not alone in my frustration and that there is plenty of reason to be worried.

“I’ve heard it all,” veteran arborist David Schwartz says of the feeble reasons many people use to justify the destruction of a tree that was planted long before they were born.

“Trees are messy — that’s what you hear a lot,” he said. “Well, if nature is too messy for us, then we are really in trouble. Every part of ourselves is part of nature. For us to take down trees because we don’t want to rake leaves or ruin a driveway is trading our future ability to breathe, just to keep things neat.”

Schwartz, who has run Schwartz Tree and Landscaping, in Coventry, for nearly 40 years, said he hears that too many trees are being lost to ignorance in Rhode Island. “Trees are basically not recognized as valuable entities here,” he said, “and are largely unprotected.

“I just keep asking myself, ‘Where is the common sense?’ Every time a mature tree is taken down, years of equity in our environment are lost.”

The value of trees is well documented. They help keep our air clean by breaking down carbon dioxide in the photosynthesis process and releasing oxygen. They moderate the climate, stabilize the soil, lessen noise pollution and increase property values.

Even so, trees don’t seem to be winning any popularity contests in Rhode Island.

Research shows that this state is losing its forests and urban trees at a sad and alarming rate.

In August, a Providence Journal article noted that, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Forest Service, Rhode Island has been steadily losing timbered land since 1963. At that time, trees covered about 434,000 acres and by 2005, that amount had dropped to 358,000 acres.

The stately old trees that add grace and comfort to city streets are not faring any better. In 2001, an article in the Journal of Forestry took a look at the cities across the country and ranked Rhode Island third from the bottom when it came to the number of urban trees. The same data also showed we have embarrassingly low numbers in other areas such as urban trees per capita and overall percentage of urban areas covered by trees.

None of this surprises Schwartz who is an outspoken advocate for tree preservation and the expert brought in by Carpionato Properties Inc. when it wanted to save the mammoth 150-year-old European beech tree that sits in the middle of its Chapel View development.

For years Schwartz has relied on his trusty 35 millimeter camera to document the state’s dying and disappearing trees, particularly in suburban and urban areas. When developers clear-cut to build new houses they are destroying long-established and self-sustaining ecosystems that survived for decades without irrigation, pesticides or fertilizers, Schwartz said.

Even when a few old trees are left standing — or skinny new saplings planted in their stead – the trauma and soil compaction from heavy equipment usually guarantees that they will be dead two years after the new homes are sold, he said.

“We take a working ecology system and replace it with these high maintenance deserts of tomorrow,” he said, referencing all the care needed and chemicals that people tend to use when the only greenery in their yards is sod and small shrubs.

“The trees are not ours — they are gifts from the past,” Schwartz said. “We are only stewards here to protect them for future generations, but we are breaking the chain and it’s not good.”

I couldn’t agree more.

Through serendipitous circumstances I came to buy a house on the same street I grew up on, and I miss the old maple tree that was cut down. I had known it since childhood.

It shaded me when I watched parades or played around its roots. It gave me temporary shelter from pelting springtime rains, and it shamelessly flaunted its blazing autumn beauty.

I can’t help but think of a quote from Henry David Thoreau: “Thank God, they cannot cut down the clouds.”

bpoliche@projo.com