[hbarka]

I’ve lived in newer suburban neighborhoods where some of the homeowners would cut their developer-planted trees down to branchless stubs, just as the trees were about to grow. I wonder what would explain the aversion to a tree. I suppose they don’t want to clean leaves during fall. The beauty of nature be damned, if even one is aware of it in this instance.

I’ve also lived in the city of San Francisco. The Department of Public Works has a tree database of all the tagged city trees. Now and then there would be a 311 call about a tree getting destroyed. If you try to plant a tree seedling it too would get pulled. Some of the reasons are that trees are equated with gentrification and raising the values of that block, thus raised rents. The beauty of nature be damned, because blight is much better.

Have you ever driven through neighborhoods with trees and ones without and think of the difference?

Trees - Joyce Kilmer

I think that I shall never see A poem lovely as a tree.

A tree whose hungry mouth is prest Against the sweet earth's flowing breast;

A tree that looks at God all day, And lifts her leafy arms to pray;

A tree that may in summer wear A nest of robins in her hair;

Upon whose bosom snow has lain; Who intimately lives with rain.

Poems are made by fools like me, But only God can make a tree.

[riotnrrd]

Those suburbanites were probably doing some variation of coppicing their trees, to keep them stunted and bushy for aesthetics.

I lived in San Francisco, too, and helped to plant dozens of trees with FUF (https://www.fuf.net/). You can't just randomly plant a tree along a sidewalk; some trees do badly in cities, attract pests, or drop inedible fruit that attracts vermin.

[adhesive_wombat]

Pollarding (not the same as topping) is very common in cities to prevent trees becoming monsters that block out all light (that 40m oak might look nice from far off, but nothing else grows under that canopy, and someone might want to see sky from their garden), can't be maintained easily and eventually become safety issues with huge windage and heavy, old, brittle branches that can break off and fall (or the whole thing goes down in a storm and takes a house with it).

A pollarded tree looks stark and misshapen when it's done, but the foliage will return bushier and denser in fairly short order.

Pollarded trees can also live longer because not only do they not blow over so often, they stay in a juvenile state of young growth longer.

[clairity]

in LA, it's that time of the year where they butcher all the street trees for no discernable reason (the stated reasons like safety make no real sense). it's infuriating. we need more cover, not less, in this drying desert area.

[causi]

Some of the reasons are that trees are equated with gentrification and raising the values of that block, thus raised rents.

That's abominable. Does that really happen?