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Re: TH: too late (fwd)
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Mon, 16 Dec 1996 17:09:37 -0500 (EST)
From: RT Ellsberry <flora@Flora.Com>
To: Community-Forestry <Tree-House@Majordomo.Flora.Com>
Subject: Re: TH: too late
Sorry to hear about the downing of the Bradford Pears along
Maryland Avenue. It's a real blow to lose your favorite street
trees like that, but it's also very important in community
forestry to be thinking many decades down the road. The great
ecologist and landscaper FLO (Frederick Law Olmstead) was working
a hundred years ago -- on projects that still today are being
worked out (like right here in Baltimore)! Olmstead meditated
deeply on green wildlife corridors, connecting his great urban
parks. Much later these ideas would become the geenways projects.
Just in the area around Baltimore, the current stages of greenways
planning are not expected to be completed for the next 30 years!
What trees are they going to plant now? Native trees are great
because the better-cared-for urban trees then become a sort of
'nusery' within their vicinity, helping to restore the original
pre-settlement forests. Is that cool or what? Perhaps some of
our readers could suggest some especially good selections. More
on the 'smaller' end of the scale I like the Washington Hawthorns
which keep their beautiful red berries through the winter -- a
living, bird-feeding Christmas Tree! Folks - what are some good
mid-sized street trees for the Chesapeake Bay region (USDA Zone 7).
For our web-surfers out there, Tree-House now has an on-line digest
search engine. If you go to Flora's Tree-House page you can then
click on [Archive Search Engine], enter your text and then you can re-
trieve old postings which cover the topics that you are searching for.
I ran a quick search on 'Bradford Pears' and immediately found the
following article which was posted to this list back in May ...
Date: 07 May 96 10:07:33 EDT
From: "Vicki L. Contie" <74352.2626@CompuServe.COM>
To: Tree-House <Tree-House@Lists.UMBC.Edu>
Message-ID: <960507140733_74352.2626_HHG62-1@CompuServe.COM>
The Q&A section of Science Times, in the NY Times, has been about trees
these past few tuesdays. Here are excerpts from today's column, by C.
Claiborne Ray:
"Q. Can you tell me about the pear tree whose white blossoms mark the
entrance of spring around New York? I never see any pears.
"A. The tree is the callery pear, Pyrus calleryana, specifically the
Bradford callery pear, a handsome variety cultivated since the 1950's. It
produces tiny inedible pears that are russet gold-brown & so are
virtually invisible amid red autumn leaves. Unfortunately, it has what
tree experts call poor branching habits; its dense branches tend to form
weak crotches that can easily split from the trunk, making it vulnerable
to ice storms, trucks, or its own weight. Its branching problems were
first described in a 1986 article in the American Nurseryman, written by
Gerald Klingman & Dr Michael Dirr. The sapling must be pruned to prevent
too many weak joints from surviving.
"The callery pear is something of a case study in the perils of planting
too many identical street trees. Long on the recommended list because of
its high survival rate in its early years, it can leave ugly blank spots
when it succumbs to a split. It grows rather slowly at first, but if it
survives to middle age, 20-25 years old, it may become 50 feet tall & 36
feet wide, & can crowd out other trees or interfere with utility lines.
"New stronger callery pears have been developed, including the
Aristocrat, Chantecleer, & Red Spire varieties.
The NY Times is at:
http://www.nytimes.com/
--
Richard@Flora.Com
Flora Communications
http://www.flora.com/tree/house/
--