January 13, 2007
TREES LOUNGE
Around dusk on New Year's Eve, I found myself in Stuy-Town, the sprawling housing complex that stretches from 1st Ave. to Ave. C on one axis and 20th St. to 14th St. on the other. The city-within-a-city recently gained a good deal of press when it became the ground supporting the largest real estate deal in NYC since Peter Minuit bought Manhattan from the native Americans, (Tishman Speyer bought Stuy-Town and adjacent Peter Cooper Village for $5.4 billion).
On the last day of 2006, however, I was more concerned with navigating my way out of the labrynthine arrangement of superblock housing before the New Year. When I finally emerged on 20th St., I took the picture above. 20th St. just east of 1st Ave. has a row of dark-colored trees that gave the block the appearance of a haunted forest. The trees were severely pruned to the point where they looked diseased. I titled the photo "Stuy-Town Cactus" because of the tree's prickly looking appearance.
A few days later, I got in touch with the management of Peter Cooper Village/Stuyvesant Town to see if there was some type of arboreal plague afflicting its trees. After a few exchanged emails that included my photo for illustrative purposes, I received the following message:
From our tree experts:
"This is not a disease. It is a pruning method called pollarding which has been done on these trees for years. This is a very old pruning method - mostly seen in Europe. The tree is Gleditsia triacanthos which is commonly known as a Honeylocust. There are several reasons for pollarding but the main reasons we do it to these trees is to keep the head of the tree compact because they were initially planted too close to buildings. This pruning method also saves energy that the plant would use if it had a larger head with more branches. This will increase the lifespan of the tree.
These trees are all located around the perimeter of the property."
And there you have it. The Honeylocusts are fine, just trimmed and resting for the winter. I have to say, I'm impressed that the management of PCV/ST go through the yearly trouble of pollarding their trees. I imagine a lot of institutions would be more than ready to uproot the trees and replace them with a less troublesome species.
I'd like to extend special thanks to Paul Latimer at PCV/ST for his prompt attention to my questions, shepherding my inquiry in the right direction, and getting back to me in such a timely manner.
Tagged:Posted by Lexiphane at January 13, 2007 3:29 AM
| NYCTrackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.lexiphane.com/mt/cgi-bin/mt-tb.cgi/1048