Wednesday, December 15, 2010

Willow wood

Last Friday, a local East Village hyperlocal blogger became a bit hysterical, nearly causing his readers to storm city offices to demand why workers savagely hacked cut back the willow tree on East Eighth Street near Avenue C ...



Well! Since then, several readers have told me, er, the blogger, that — despite the appearances — this is actually just fine for the tree. So, in the sober light of day... Several readers passed along links to willow pruning forums and self-help groups... As one willow tree forum member said, "willows are very tolerant of massive pruning (you could cut it back to a stump and it will still re-sprout)."

Meanwhile, during the weekend, I took a walk by to see the tree for myself... there was a stack of firewood for the taking... (not to mention some random mail — oh look, Discover Card!)



...and workers hacked down the other tree on the lot...



We'll come back for a look in the spring

6 comments:

Melanie said...

EVG--pursuing this story I asked my source if they cut this now sculpture as well. He told me that it had been that way for a long time.

Anonymous said...

It's well-founded concern, Grieve! There was spectacular maple about 5 stories high in the courtyard of my building in Chinatown. Came home one day and they had been "trimming it" in a similar manner; came home the next day and it was a stump.Boooooooooooo!D:

Morgan Tsvangirai said...

What happened to Bloomberg's campaign of planting a million trees? Cut down old ones and replace with tiny saplings that inevitably get broken/smashed/run over?

blue glass said...

what is this "you might also like" stuff you've added?

Melanie said...

I spoke with a friend who added...to insure a building you need to be up to par on codes, etc. The tree limbs may have prevented the building from getting insurance and their lawyers advised them of this fact. Not tree maintenance but property safety and no lawsuit potential.

Jill said...

Tree trimmers have to be licensed. I'm not sure if that makes them extra super talented at tree trimming, but it supposedly stops random people who don't know what they are doing from killing trees.

Remember the guys who had a big giant stick and went around responding to people who needed plastic bags taken out of trees? They were stopped because they weren't properly licensed to touch the trees.