Tree City USA
by Phillip Barron
Maybe we should rethink our commitment to urban forestry. I’m not exactly feeling the full benefits.
Edit: By request, here’s the poster image in pdf to download, print, and/or share with your favorite City Council members.
Comments
Did you happen to see the mutant tree that fell on a house on Club? It was a block or two east of Broad Street. I can’t help but think that the pruning somehow unbalanced the tree.
Yes, I saw it just yesterday walking through Walltown. The root system was surprisingly shallow, I thought, but I also wondered what you are wondering — whether the lopsided pruning unbalanced the tree, weighting it down on the side that eventually pulled toward the house. Scary. And it’s not fair to the home owners who live on streets with trees pruned in this bizarre way.
Thanks for the tip.
I think the root system depth is pretty typical for a willow oak, though I’m not sure of this. Growing in highly compacted soil with concrete and asphalt around probably doesn’t help.
I’m not an arborist, but it seems that at this point they should just start over with the trees on streets that have low lines. The trees themselves are aging and are probably damaged to a point that they cannot recover.
I don’t know about burying the lines, which is aesthitically pleasing, but exorbitant in cost. Maybe they should put in trees that can be pruned from the start to grow around/under the lines.