We Are Losing Trees Today

[doomsdave]

Avoid poplars (Populus) for the same reason as willows. Those big cigar Lombardy poplars are the Devil's invention.

Winchester , I'll be curious to see what you get. It's always cool to make lemonade out of a lemon.

 

[Winchester]

Poplars are usually a big accident waiting to happen, IMO. Not going there.

 

[doomsdave]

I'd avoid Ash, Fraxinus, too. BIG limbs love to break off in storms. Crush cars, trucks, people. Ouch. We have them in California, too. Great firewood, though!

 

[doomsdave]

Winchester , what's happening with the trees? Always curious to see stuff like that.

I might be in California, but you can't the Ohio and Pennsylvania out of me.

 

[Winchester]

It's been so rainy and wet around here that we've not gone to a nursery yet. I don't know if you know or not, but we lost two more trees for a total of nine now. A wind shear came down the hill, hit a maple, split the maple and other half of the maple flew into an adjacent pine tree and took the top out of the pine tree.

We're deciding if we want to try our luck letting both of these trees go. We took the split out of the maple tree and the top of the pine tree out. But we've done nothing with the rest of them yet. We should probably just take them down and be done with it, but we've lost a lot this year.

If the weather calms down this weekend, we're going to hit our favorite nursery to see what they have. Thanks for asking.

 

[DreamerRose]

Winchester - Will you mind if I make a suggestion? I lost an ash tree to ash borers, and the city replaced it as it was on the parking strip. They gave us a choice, and I asked for a hybrid elm for that location. It is a gorgeous tree, and it grows very fast. In two years it's doubled in size. Usually, fast growth like that indicates weak wood, but it doesn't appear to be with the elm. It can get very windy here in the Chicago area, and it's never lost so much as a twig. Those long, young branches whip around in the wind, but have never broken.

 

[Winchester]

Thank you DreamerRose . We are looking at the hybrid elms for our yard, too!

 

[doomsdave]

Winchester don’t be afraid to keep options open

 

[Winchester]

The only thing is that I want them to be trees that are sturdy. Flowering would be nice, too. I'm really looking forward to seeing Golden Empress trees and the elm trees. But really, we are keeping our options open. It will be interesting to see what the local nurseries have.

We have blue spruce, white pine (which are really kind of junk trees, but they were given to us), redbud, dogwood, maple, white oak, flowering chestnut, flowering crab, some kind of willow (that was given to us), black walnut, and Japanese maples. We have plenty of room for more trees!

 

[Winchester]

We bought an elm tree on Saturday. It was leftover from last year at the nursery and the only elm tree in stock. It's nine feet tall right now. Rick will be going in on Monday morning to bring it home; the nursery is Amish-owned and operated, so they'll be open on Memorial Day, although I think a lot of places will be open tomorrow. We are not having a lot of luck in our search for the cold-hardly Golden Empress. I may have to order it.

 

[denice]

I don't know if the Golden Empress is the same as the Royal Empress. If it is it may be very difficult to find because it is considered invasive, Connecticut has banned the sale of them. The USDA has listed them as a noxious weed. Pros & Cons for Paulownia Trees

 

[di and bob]

We just lost two of our huge cottonless cottonwoods in our front yard to disease, bugs,? Most likely to being trimmed by NPPD to keep them out of the power lines. We went and talked to them and they came and took them out for free! It looks so bare! Now we are finding out from various stump grinding companies tehy want a minimum of 250.00 per stump to grind them out. We decided to put a berm over them for that much. Went out and bought a truckload of huge rocks with the money we saved. We are planting a Canadian Flowering Cherry in their place, grows only 40 foot tall but plenty of shade.
Watch those Paulownia trees, my husbands stepdad has planted several of them, different kinds, and they die to the ground every winter. Make sure you insist on seeing one growing in your area if you have freezing winters. They make a pretty bush!

 

[Docs Mom]

Forget that willow....they grow fast, get huge....then they DIE slowly ... We have a large yard and a huge old willow. It might be 6 or 7 feet in diameter, it is trunk, some low live branches and a upper woodpecker haven.

How about River Birches ? They have a beautiful golden and tan peeling bark, often triple trunks.

 

[neely]

I just saw your thread and it really hit home, literally! We also lost several trees to a microburst. Three were in our yard long before we moved here but one we planted ourselves and when the neighbor's tree behind us got hit during a storm it took down our fence and part of our maple tree with it. I love trees and have fond memories of my children hanging their homemade birdhouses from them.
Best of luck with your new elm tree.

 

[MoochNNoodles]

I don't know if the Golden Empress is the same as the Royal Empress. If it is it may be very difficult to find because it is considered invasive, Connecticut has banned the sale of them. The USDA has listed them as a noxious weed. Pros & Cons for Paulownia Trees

Someone in my mother's neighborhood had one of those. It wasn't there too long but it did get huge. I remember it didn't grow "pretty" either; with a trunk and leafy branches. The leaves were growing out of the trunk and roots (which were exposed) at one point. I can definitely see how it would be classified invasive and a weed.

The house it was planted in front of has had wind damage a bunch of times. So I bet they planted that to try to shield the house. (There is another house just up the street that faces the same direction and it always gets wind damage too.) I think in the end the wind took it out.

 

[Winchester]

We did look at river birches at one of the nurseries on Saturday and they are really pretty at maturity.

The cold-hardy Empress is sterile and not considered invasive (I have a list of Pennsylvania Invasive plants and trees at work and will have to check it. There are certain species that we do not allow for land development screenings and landscapings because they are considered to be invasive). It's still a fast grower.

No, Our Royal Empress Trees Aren't Invasive, Here's Why | Fast-growing-Trees.com
Cold Hardy Empress Tree on Fast Growing Trees Nursery

Off topic: Speaking of invasive, about 30 years ago, I planted 20 grape hyacinths. Worse mistake I ever made! We're having a horrible time trying to get rid of those buggers. They're all over the front flower bed. Oh, yeah, they're pretty; it's like an ocean of blue when they're in bloom. But they're strangling out our other perennials in the bed and they're a big nuisance. We keep getting in there every spring and digging them out, only to have them come back the next spring. What a mess from 20 grape hyacinth bulbs!

 

[denice]

That is amazing that they are using cloning. It makes sense, an exact replica except the seeds are sterile. They certainly are fast growing.

 

[DreamerRose]

We have blue spruce, white pine (which are really kind of junk trees, but they were given to us), redbud, dogwood, maple, white oak, flowering chestnut, flowering crab, some kind of willow (that was given to us), black walnut, and Japanese maples. We have plenty of room for more trees!

How big are those black walnuts? They exude a sticky sap that will kill anything it falls on. I learned the hard way about this. They don't do it until they are about 10 years old. They kill EVERYTHING close to them.

 

[Winchester]

DreamerRose Our black walnut is huge; we planted it as a twig (I think it was about eight inches tall) about 35 years ago. And the black walnut does not play well with others, that's for sure. We think it's slowly killing our lilac bushes at the end of the house. When we installed our shed several years ago, I wanted to landscape around it, but we knew that plants and flowers wouldn't make it because of the walnut tree. I won't cut it down, though; we planted it because my father dearly loved black walnuts.

 

[DreamerRose]

That's too bad, Winchester . My father loved them, too, and collected the nuts. He saved every volunteer that came up in the yard. But one of them killed a beautiful mountain laurel and a bed of lily-of-the-valley. A big loss.