New Tree from Hell! Bradford Pear

13 years ago

i have a single tree, now about 20 feet tall (or at least it was before Hurricane Sandy lopped off a few of the taller branches). Nonetheless, it's in an ideal spot, is the perfect shape, and behaves (generally) in keeping with its surroundings. it's also in a tightly planted border of laurel, holly, azalea, yews --- you get the idea ... removal and replacement might be very difficult if not impossible. The only problem with it is that its roots send up suckers by the hundreds virtually everywhere within a 10 foot radius. Bad enough mowing them in the lawn where they leave sturdy little stems that stab your barefeet, but they grow up and through the other shrubs until their leaves peak out above the azaleas and hollies. I'm on my hands and knees and often flat on my stomach once a week (at least) with a hand pruner crawling under the shrubs and finding and cutting the stems. I'm reluctant to spray with Roundup for fear of harming the other plants and bringing the herbicide to the mother tree.

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Comments (3)

ken_adrian Adrian MI cold Z5
13 years ago
whats new about it.. we have been saying so forever ...

you can not RU the suckers w/o killing mom... which you should do regardless ...

no need to remove the roots... have it cut to ground level ... use the applicator at the link... and apply 100% RU to the cambian layer ... the green layer just under the bark ....

then crawl around and snip each sucker and put a drop or two on each snip...

sooner or later.. it will get the idea and die ...

your base mis-impression.. is that you would spray RU rather than drip ... with drip.. you will have no impact on anything around it ...

ken

Here is a link that might be useful: the beuaty is the ability to drip single drops.. rather than spray ....
arktrees
13 years ago
onthebrinck,
What you do not appear to realize is that your tree is almost certain to soon split down the middle, and cleave off a sizeable portion of itself in a storm, or just a strong breeze. At 20', this can happen any day now, and since you state Sandy has already damaged it, even though that damage may appear mild, it almost certainly started the failure process in the joint between the larger branches. It's not a matter of "IF" this will happen with these, but "WHEN" will it happen. And when it happens, it's going to damage everything around it. So the advice to take it out now is sound IMHO, as you can then at least keep it from taking anything else with it.

Arktrees
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Toronado3800 Zone 6 St Louis
13 years ago
Ditto.

It really is the tree from hell. Breaks in the wind. Suckers soo badly you can not walk around it. How do them flowers smell in the spring?

Sounds like except for the pain of removing it your life woukd be better if it were gone.

I will confess out in back I have a Bradford. It even lost a branch in the storm and I have not removed it. Then again it is not in the prime garden area and I am just waiting for the wind to do the rest of the job for me or this oak to grow and get more of a presence, I have removed too many trees.

Look up some other trees and see if that can not get ya excited about replacing the Bradford. There is a tree form of serviceberry, paperbark maples, black gum (nyssa sylvatica), the crab apples it just goes on.

Here is a link that might be useful: hort.uconn.edu