101–110 of 154 posts
When the article got to the part where the trees were thought to be sterile, did anyone else hear Jeff Goldblum saying “Life finds a way”?
"Life ... finds a way".
... with bird poop.
The latter probably not in Jeff Goldblum's voice though.
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I thought you were going to say something about how large branches will just pop off and crush anything beneath them at random times. This is due to how multiple branches will come from the trunk at the same point, and are weakly attached. EDIT: Having finally eradicated all of the ones from our land, the best method is to immediately pour herbicide onto the trunk after cutting it down. The herbicide will get sucked…
What herbicide do you use? I have a tree growing under my roofline that keeps growing back. I tried glyphosate last time, but it came back.
Also, a spot treatment of the ends means considerably less herbicide entering the soil.
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I think this takes the cake for "first invasive species I've seen populate over my lifespan." Just moved back to GA after 3 years away and asked folks what all the white-blossoming trees in meadows are this spring, as don't remember seeing so many blossoms previously. Cherries (closest blossom I know) aren't that fruitful / clustering. Dogwoods look completely different. > Extremely prone to falling over during winds…
A few observations: Japanese Cherries can be much more packed with flowers than this pear (It depends on the cultivar). Both Cherries and Dogwoods are royalty on gardens, but both deploy to much wider structures that can be low branched and tend to hang searching the floor, so this Pyrus is still pretty much unbeatable for narrow streets. Palms have their own problems, like thorns, but are "designed" for streets with…
Why did anyone want pear trees whose fruit is inedible and whose flowers smell bad in the first place?
Just the ticket for fly-by-night real estate developers.
By the time they get big enough to cause problems, the developer is long gone, off to fleece other suckers.
Somewhat worse: Krauter Vesuvius / Cherry Plum trees stain sidewalks and make a horrible mess every year.
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IIRC they were introduced aggressively as being a non-propagating, non fruiting tree or something, both of which turned out to be false, but by the time people realized this it was far too late :-/ Reminds me of SF planting Pōhutakawas everywhere - an NZ native tree that requires little water, don't fall over, don't fruit, etc. Except as any NZer could tell you, the reason they don't fall over is that they're evolved…
Eucalyptus in southern California; railroads thought they'd be great for building ties out of, they're not, and they're extremely flammable and explode.
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To expand on this, many states have a large white pine lumber industry. The white pine is highly susceptible to a type of fungus harbored by currants. The fungus does not spread from white pine to white pine, only from currants to currant, or currant to white pine, so eliminating the nearby currants protects the white pine industry.
In Europe they decided to get rid of the white pines (which are not native) in favor of the blackcurrants.
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To expand on this, many states have a large white pine lumber industry. The white pine is highly susceptible to a type of fungus harbored by currants. The fungus does not spread from white pine to white pine, only from currants to currant, or currant to white pine, so eliminating the nearby currants protects the white pine industry.
Apparently this is no longer much of an issue. Quoting [0]: "The federal ban was lifted in 1966, though many states maintained their own bans. Research showed that blackcurrants could be safely grown some distance from white pines and this, together with the development of rust-immune varieties and new fungicides, led to most states lifting their bans by 2003. Blackcurrants are now grown commercially in the Northeast…
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These are the same trees known as Cum Trees, right? My neighbors have a couple, I didn't know these before moving to the US, and the first time I smelled them was... something.
At least one street here got lined with those. A witty lesbian friend I was walking with identified the scent immediately, so at least the trees were good for some jokes.
Was on HOA board where we had a road with quite a few of these trees. They were a fortune to prune because of the numerous small branches at higher reaches. As a board, we actually hoped they would come down in storms so we could replace with something more appropriate without the take down cost (and resident complaints). Another unqiue thing is during the summer it was not uncommon for a branch to suddenly explode -…
They also smell like someone took a rotting fish, dunked it in sewage and decided to roast it in the sun for a few days. They're everywhere where I live, and it's so bad.
These days you can really only buy the male ones but older plantings are awful. https://www.purdue.edu/fnr/extension/ginkgo-stinkgo-are-boys...