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Urban Trees
#1
I was looking for a 'Trees' thread, and was surprised not to find one. Spokes, if this should be moved to Transportation and Infrastructure (trees are living infrastructure!), feel free.

Anyway, I was interested to read this: Waterloo to give away 2,017 trees for Canada’s 150th
[/url]
[url=http://www.therecord.com/news-story/7194366-waterloo-to-give-away-2-017-trees-for-canada-s-150th/]
Perhaps the City of Kitchener could follow suit. During consultations on the City's Neighbourhood Strategy, there was discussion about subsidizing street trees in private front yards, which would be great neighbourhood-building indeed. It's very neat that Waterloo will celebrate Canada's birthday by giving away 2000+ maple trees. Hopefully good information about where they are best suited, and how to best care for them, will be provided too.
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#2
Another good thing is that it'll be red maples and sugar maples, not Norway maples (which is not a native species).

Not a big budget line item, Kitchener should definitely follow suit!
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#3
I think (hope) that the days of municipalities planting Norway maples are over- you're right, they are something of a menace.

It sounds like these won't even be hybrids, but strictly sugar and red maples. Perfectly suited to here, since they're from here.
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#4
Not a fan of sugar maples - used to have an old one in my yard that had been striped to an inch of its life by wildlife. Had to take it down before it collapsed.

That said, I'm not sure the previous owners gave it any sort of helping care...
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#5
(03-17-2017, 02:08 PM)MidTowner Wrote: I was looking for a 'Trees' thread, and was surprised not to find one. Spokes, if this should be moved to Transportation and Infrastructure (trees are living infrastructure!), feel free.

Anyway, I was interested to read this: Waterloo to give away 2,017 trees for Canada’s 150th
[/url]
[url=http://www.therecord.com/news-story/7194366-waterloo-to-give-away-2-017-trees-for-canada-s-150th/]
Perhaps the City of Kitchener could follow suit. During consultations on the City's Neighbourhood Strategy, there was discussion about subsidizing street trees in private front yards, which would be great neighbourhood-building indeed. It's very neat that Waterloo will celebrate Canada's birthday by giving away 2000+ maple trees. Hopefully good information about where they are best suited, and how to best care for them, will be provided too.

This fits.  Great thread idea.
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#6
(03-17-2017, 04:14 PM)KevinL Wrote: Not a fan of sugar maples - used to have an old one in my yard that had been striped to an inch of its life by wildlife. Had to take it down before it collapsed.

That said, I'm not sure the previous owners gave it any sort of helping care...

How is this possible???  No maple syrup for you!!!
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#7
Quote:danbrotherston

I would agree our urban forest is not terribly substantial.  Even in the townships, it's quite depleted.  Trees for Woolwich has been attempting to reverse this trend, but the ash borer has been devastating there as well.

I am curious how you know plantings today are less diverse?  I realize that historically they have been pretty much a monoculture (mostly ash, unfortunately), but I thought we'd realized how terrible an idea that is, and would now be planting a more diverse population.
Actually, when I said that our plantings are less diverse now, I was thinking more of private property owners than municipalities and other organizations. The majority of trees are on private property, after all, and those owners may have different priorities and different levels of knowledge. Also different levels of patience- I don't often see recently-planted oaks in front yards.
Ash isn't the majority of our urban forest, fortunately, but you're right that they're in big numbers, and municipalities seem to have liked them and elms a lot- bad luck. Maple is the most common by far in urban areas around here, and to the extent we have a diversity issue, it's that there are too many maples and many homeowners, when wanting to plant a tree, opt for one.
That's actually the specific case I'm thinking of when I say that mature trees may represent more diversity than the ones replacing it: a couple of mature oaks or hickories cut down, replaced by the developer by some autumn blaze maples.*
You're probably right when you say that cities are getting better at diversity, and not just planting thousands and thousands of elms or ash any more.
*There's nothing wrong with autumn blaze maples. We probably don't need quite so many of them, though.
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#8
The City of Waterloo's Urban Forest Policy aims to have no species of tree represent more than 20% of the urban canopy.  I'm not sure if that's currently the reality or if that's the goal.  I've certainly noticed that any Norway maple that is removed is replaced by something different.

As for general genetic diversity within a species pool, I wonder how much control nurseries have in maintaining a diverse genetic stock.  Are they planting acorns and maple keys from a variety of trees and hoping for the best, or are some trees simply branches that are rooted up to become trees?  If the latter is the case, then the purchasing municipality could have a more limited tree gene pool.
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#9
Anybody know if Kitchener and/or Waterloo have started planting elms again?
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#10
(08-28-2017, 11:25 AM)MidTowner Wrote:
Quote:danbrotherston
I am curious how you know plantings today are less diverse?  I realize that historically they have been pretty much a monoculture (mostly ash, unfortunately), but I thought we'd realized how terrible an idea that is, and would now be planting a more diverse population.

Actually, when I said that our plantings are less diverse now, I was thinking more of private property owners than municipalities and other organizations. The majority of trees are on private property, after all, and those owners may have different priorities and different levels of knowledge.
Is there some data somewhere on the tree species on private properties?  Or is this just anecdotal observation?
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#11
My comment about people not planting oaks is pure anecdotal observation (probably tilted a bit by individual preference, to boot). But the diversity of a lot of cities' urban forest is not high- I've read that, in Toronto, more than 20% of the canopy is maple. Parks and Forestry in Toronto says that the top ten most common species make up 58% of the total population.

nms, you bring up a good point about genetic diversity. Growers do not grow from seed (since the resulting tree will have unpredictable characteristics). They grow from cuttings, so the resulting tree is a clone of its parent, genetically the same. You're right that risk can be increased from that.
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#12
This is a rather disappointing story. It's especially galling knowing how difficult it can be to convince the city to enforce bylaws that actually matter.

https://www.therecord.com/news-story/814...into-snag/
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#13
(02-22-2018, 06:27 AM)jamincan Wrote: This is a rather disappointing story. It's especially galling knowing how difficult it can be to convince the city to enforce bylaws that actually matter.

https://www.therecord.com/news-story/814...into-snag/

Wow....just...wow. Seems the government has a unique way of killing family happiness. Wouldn't want to promote education within the city when you already have 2 universities doing that.
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#14
(02-22-2018, 08:04 AM)jeffster Wrote:
(02-22-2018, 06:27 AM)jamincan Wrote: This is a rather disappointing story. It's especially galling knowing how difficult it can be to convince the city to enforce bylaws that actually matter.

https://www.therecord.com/news-story/814...into-snag/

Wow....just...wow. Seems the government has a unique way of killing family happiness. Wouldn't want to promote education within the city when you already have 2 universities doing that.

Sounds like somebody needs to get over to King St. and enforce some parking bylaws. They’re obviously not very busy.

Although to be fair, this at least isn’t a completely frivolous enforcement exercise. We probably don’t want people nailing tree houses and the like to City trees. I wonder how easy it is to tap a tree wrong and actually damage it for real (as opposed to hypothetically).
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#15
(02-22-2018, 08:59 AM)ijmorlan Wrote:
(02-22-2018, 08:04 AM)jeffster Wrote: Wow....just...wow. Seems the government has a unique way of killing family happiness. Wouldn't want to promote education within the city when you already have 2 universities doing that.

Sounds like somebody needs to get over to King St. and enforce some parking bylaws. They’re obviously not very busy.

Although to be fair, this at least isn’t a completely frivolous enforcement exercise. We probably don’t want people nailing tree houses and the like to City trees. I wonder how easy it is to tap a tree wrong and actually damage it for real (as opposed to hypothetically).

I've tapped a few trees over the years at a property that my friend's parents own out in the country, none of the trees I've ever tapped have suffered any obvious damage. The hole for the spile is only around 2" deep and maybe 1/2" around. The maples around my place near Vic Park have all kinds of holes from woodpeckers that are bigger than that so in my opinion the to call tapping a tree "damage" is a bit of a stretch and the only way tapping a tree is gonna hurt it is if it's a small tree that gets 2 or more spiles. The only time I put more than 1 spile in a tree is if it was over 24" across and on some of the biggest trees I could find that were closer to 36" I'd put three. I guess if someone used a sledge hammer to pound a spile in it could split the wood but most modern spiles would break or bend before they could act as a splitting wedge.

I wonder how bylaw even got wind of this... maybe they had a bucket on the spile, I usually ran clear hose to a bigger bucket since I wasn't around to empty the pails every day.
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