The plight of street trees
The theme for May's Festival of the Trees is "trees in the concrete" hosted by Xris at Flatbush Gardener. I live in the country, and thought I would have to travel all the way into Dublin for this project. But walking to the shop recently, I saw the plight of our very own street trees.
This poor thing never had a chance, its bottom half had been completely torn away. It looks like it's been hanged for a crime never commited.
A popular sport in Dublin was the breaking of newly planted trees. I thought by moving further out into the countryside, things like this wouldn't happen.
Large gaping wounds and snapped branches were everywhere all along our street.
I don't understand what makes this a fun thing to do.. things like this always make me sad for the trees.
A lovely cherry tree, but only slightly mutilated.
Today, my husband came home from the shop, telling me they were cutting down trees on the main road into the village. So I hopped on my bicycle to have a look. I thought I should take some photos before they were all gone.
I came just before this tree fell. It was so sad!! I had never seen a tree felled before, it must have been terrifying for the tree!
*sigh* A man who lives across the road came out to talk with me. They had pleaded with the council to try and stop this, but the destruction had gone ahead anyway.
On the way back to my house, I took a pic of this little tree, its trunk snapped by some tree-bully when it was first planted. But here it is, regrowing several new branches, and looking quite pretty in spite of the broken trunk. Life prevails.Posting today, a few weeks early for May's Festival of the Trees, as this was quite upsetting, and I had to get it out.
posted by Silvia Hoefnagels . Salix Tree @ 2:20 pm
8 Comments:
It must be very unpleasant for you to see such stupid vandalism. I hate to see trees cut down too. Did they give any reason for it? It would seem that with all he destruction of young trees they would try to preserve the estalished ones.
Double sigh.
How terrible when people treat trees that way. Do they not know that trees are our friends and that we need them?
I hate to see a beautiful tree chopped down, can't stand it!
Hurray for the little tree that survived the vandalism!
Hi Anna Maria,
I did say to one of the tree-cutters that it was so sad to see these giant beauties cut down. He just looked at me and shrugged.
My hubby thinks they were cut down, so people could see the new houses behind the row of trees. Seems silly to me, I would WANT a nice row of big trees to screen the road from the house.
This is horrible! Recently I managed to talk a homeowner out of cutting down his trees (he wanted to grow a lawn instead!) by pointing out that trees help cool his house in summer by shading it and help heat it in winter by allowing sunlight in when they have no leaves thereby keeping down his utilities costs (heating and air conditioning). He didn't know that and decided to keep his trees.
I've never heard of vandalism like this before. It's so senseless and angers me as well. I can't imagine why anyone would get their kicks by doing this!
It isn't a compulsion I feel myself, but there's something about the arrangement of branches along a trunk, or a flower stem thrust upward, or a shrub with branches at hand level that makes some people want to break them off! I've seen groups of kids reach out to grab and twist anything handy as they walk and talk, apparently not really conscious that their actions have consequences.
Young deer stand around in groups, showing off for each other by butting sapling trunks and ripping off branches. Maybe the humans are attempting to show that they're stronger than a tree?
Salix Tree, nice entry for the Festival of Trees!
Annie at the Transplantable Rose
What a sad series of photos, I'm so glad you ended up with a hopeful little sapling! The council have been chopping trees down near where I work, but only the diseased and dangerous ones and they're now planting new ones. Even knowing that they were going to do this though it was soo sad to see the old ones come down.
I can't imagine why anyone would get their kicks by doing this!
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