Hi, my name is Blair Glen I am ISA certified arborist an owners of Saratoga Trees Service. I would like to take a few minutes and talk about the flowering pair. Principally I would like to talk about a species of flowering pair that is commonly use as a street tree and the common name is the Bradford Pear. Here you can see a miss half or a large limb failed and broke of. It is about first of October, we had a very dry year, and amazingly, there is an abundant number of fruit and knots and acorns on all of the trees. In this case this is a flowering tree that still produces a very tiny pair it is a none edible pair but the numbers of fruit on the tree cause the tree to fail. Another interesting anomaly that associated with this particular type of tree is the very tight branch limb structure. If you look on the far right hand side, you can see that two of the limbs are so close together that as each of them expands in diameter there is nothing that could happened except that they are going to split push each other a part. There is a close up with that fruit that I am talking about.
What I am showing you here is what is commonly done these days in street trees is to put the tree in an enclosure or a root containment the theory is that this forces the roots grow down. The reality is that these things rarely work they cause more damage than good and as you can see in this one that is already broken. The containment and the roots either go over or go under and come back up but the sad part is that they usually cause the roots girdle and grow around in a corner and they usually cause more damage than good. I also have to wonder if this root containments cause a root system to grow in an unnatural way and do not allow the tree to get enough uptake of water an nutrients to actually create a weaker tree that is my theory but take it for it worth. This tree has been use in abundant as a street tree because of the way it grows and it has a much more upright stature. It does not get to large and it has absolute beautiful white flowers blossoms in the spring time. Unfortunately, it is also a tree that has a tendency to grow outward down low enough were truck seems to clear of the branches and often times in this case but by the bus stop here. The requirements are now to pretty much butcher the tree on the street side so I am not quite sure if this is a good choose for a street tree. Now here is a very good example of that tight bark trunk inclusion where you have the branches growing so close together that they force each other apart.
The city of San Jose has had a many, many instances hundreds of instances of the street trees is actually splitting falling apart in many cases actually falling on cars. This is unusual but the tree seems to be associated with this particular cultivar I do not know exactly what causes it but the majority of the Bradford Pear have this unfortunate configuration of trunk and limb structure. You can see in just a short period of time this two branches are going to grown into each other and then essence is going to cause the tree to commit suicide.
This is a prime example of what I was talking about before when you have a tree in a root containment it does not allow the roots to grow normal they should be near the surface. They should be spreading out giving the tree a good stability the concept of forcing the roots to go down so they do not lift the side walk is a good concept but you have to find a balance between what the tree needs and what you can get away with when you plant a tree in an enclosure like this. there are many cultivars of this tree and many of them have better qualities to them pruning is a very, very important step in pruning out the tight branches at a very early age and it can be a very nice tree if it is talking care of from the on set. There are number of other problems associated with it including fire of blight, which is devastating and also leaf spot. There is also another flowering pair called aristocrat pair which is really hammer with the leaf spot it do not seem to have as bad of a tight on trunk bark inclusion problem or tight structural problem on the limbs structure. Thanks for taking a few minutes to watch this brief presentation about the flowering pair and once again, my name is Blair Glen I am the owner of Saratoga Tree Service.
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