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Citizen complaint of the day: Why is one city department choking the trees another department planted?
By adamg on Tue, 09/11/2012 - 7:54am
A concerned citizen spotted tree choking on Burbank Street in the Fenway:
Plastic ties used by BTD to affix parking ban sign to recently planted katsura tree on burbank st. if left the way they are they will literally choke the tree and kill it, losing how many hundreds of dollars per tree? this is nothing short of city sponsored tree vandalism.
Neighborhoods:
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Comments
Why is the road choked?
Adding 3 feet to both sidewalks:
1. Doesn't look safe for a bicycle to fit along side a car.
2. Limits options when the City changes traffic patterns next time.
3. Seems unneeded for likely pedestrian traffic volumes.
Oh, there's a very simple solution to all of that
Just remove the free, government subsidized parking off of the public way and there'd be four-and-a-half to nine more feet in the right-of-way to work with.
Mark, you're clueless about
Mark, you're clueless about this street. It sees more pedestrians and bicycles than cars on a daily basis. The width of Burbank Street hasn't changed since it was laid out as Astor Street in the late 1880s.
safe for bikes
I think it looks fine for bikes. Given that there is no bike lane, they can just drive themselves right down the middle of the street as they are allowed to do as another user of the street. It's a fairly quiet, residential street in the Fenway, no car needs to be hauling ass down the street. So no need to fit alongside a car. Seems like a solution to the non-problem you've presented.
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Wouldn't the tree just burst the plastic tie eventually?
Unless the bark was sliced at least a half circle and more, wouldn't the tree grow until it's circumference become larger than the tie and break it? Worst case, the tree would grow over the tie and there would be a weird hump. Either case, I've seen trees that have grown THROUGH fences, I doubt a plastic tie will stop it.
That, or grow over it.
https://www.google.com/search?q=trees+growing+arou...
Go up to Vermont
and take a walk in the woods. You'll find trees grown around old 1800s manual plows and 1940s cars. It's fun.
Probably not
I've seen larger trees killed by encircling garden twine and fishing line. All of the flow of water and nutrients in a tree is in a very thin layer under the bark and it doesn't take much to interrupt it. Trees can grow around things that impale them or lean against them because some viable vascular tissue remains but when there is something encircling the flow stops and the tree dies.
This citizen complaint is completely valid and BTD or whoever used zip ties on a tree is completely irresponsible.
An old landlord of mine used
An old landlord of mine used dental floss to tie his poor yew hedge back to the house. He was so proud of his clever, DIY tricks. By the time I lived there, the caliper below the loop of floss was twice the diameter of the stem above the floss, and the previous decade's needles were a mere 1/4" long. I'm still astonished that they managed to live at all under those conditions. Kind of amazing.
Yup, It was no easy task
Yup, It was no easy task removing the old nasty chainlink fence from my property since it was embedded in a few trees. We kept the trees and just cut the fence. It was clear through the middle of trees as big around as an average size man.
No, if you damage the entire
No, if you damage the entire circumference of the tree, it prevents nutrients from being transported and kills the tree.
http://www.redorbit.com/news/science/1399678/scien...
Just cut it off-
probably take less energy than this complaint
Amen, but the CC poster has a point too
I also would just take out my leatherman and slice it off, but the poster probably realized that even if that worked for the tree in front of him, that's hardly a solution to the more general problem. It's a toughie - my first thought - just replace the zip-ties with a staper - won't work if the sign has to go around a metal post or cement light fixture, et al. A roll of low-tack tape might be the best solution, and likely cheaper than zip ties as well.
Stapling to trees
is not good for them either.
If they heal when you trim
If they heal when you trim off a whole branch, I doubt a staple or two would do any harm.
not really...
Proper pruning with clean, sharp equipment allows for efficient healing, because the tree can compartmentalize the damaged areas to protect the rest of the tree. Sort like the way we humans form scar tissue, but more critical. Otherwise damage to bark tissue has the potential to introduce pathogens into a living system. Not good.
Anything that penetrates through the bark (like construction staples, or nails holding a clothesline) ups the ante by providing a route for pathogens directly into the vascular system of the tree. As the above Arborist posted, that system is located right below the bark, in a very thin layer.
So anyone who wants to cut these zip ties off will do best for the tree by avoiding cutting through the bark with their Leatherman. And thanks to anyone who's up for liberating our common trees from that plastic torture!
The plastic ties most likely weren't used by BTD
But by whomever requested the no parking signs.
From the BTD website:
The City provides the signs, but not the means to affix the signs.
Update: Those aren't city chokers
A city spokeswoman e-mail the Hub Cave with word from BTD:
She adds that even those those are not BTD ties, BTD's dispatching somebody to snip the bands.
BTD does not choke trees
I knew it couldn't be them. It's out of scope. Their job is to choke the city with traffic.