Street Tree Project

In this assignment, I inspected trees in people's front yards. I crunched, smelled, felt, counted, and photographed parts of each tree, as well as made extremely awkward eye contact with people watching me from their windows.

I also spilled a lot of coffee on sidewalks because I decided that walking around the neighborhood and drinking coffee from a mug while looking at trees is much more rewarding and exciting than mindlessly sipping from a to-go cup, like a giant baby-adult.

To answer Ritter's question, if I had to pick one of these trees to use as toilet paper, I'd probably go with the silk oak...that or the yucca. I'm not going to lie- this prompt makes me think botany professors just sit around and ask these types of questions of their students so they can call each other and go, "Hey...guess what one of my students would use as toilet paper... Toxicodendron diversilobum."

Continuing with the prompt... I grew up in a city where Heat Island Effect was oppressive, partially because street trees were few and far between, especially along commonly-used pedestrian routes. So, yes, I think street trees definitely make a neighborhood more pleasant. They also add to the visual appeal. No one likes a naked street.

A pro to planting non-native trees in our cities is that they might be better suited to meet specific society-driven purposes, such as the ability to bear certain types of fruit for urban food forests. A con is that the tree will likely not be as well-suited for the given environment as a native tree would be, and may require more resources such as water. This need may cause some non-native trees to uptake more available water, limiting water for native species, which could result in aggressive growth and invasive tendencies in the non-native species.

Posted on April 21, 2020 06:41 AM by alexmichel