Street Tree Selection

A job took us to a wholesale nursery on Long Island to hand select street trees for a local municipality. The nursery's specialty is tree stock that is specifically grown for placement in cities, towns, and villages in the tri-state area.

As you can see from the length of the trunks, these trees are grown and pruned to be suitable specimens for planting near pedestrian traffic. Not one low hanging branch can be found here.

Since much of the plant material available locally is shipped from the south and west, it was great to see a nearby nursery growing a wide variety of strong, healthy trees. 

Yale Discovers Fungus That Eats Palstic

Students at Yale University, part of the Rainforest Expedition and Laboratory with molecular biochemistry professor Scott Strobel, recently discovered a fungus in the Amazonian rainforest that naturally eats polyurethane and breaks it down into carbon. This is the first fungus species, identified by the group as Pestalotiopsis microspore, that has a steady diet of polyurethane alone. Most impactful is that it can grow in an oxygen free environment, which will enable the fungus to do it's dining in the deepest regions of our landfills.

At the same time, we should look more closer at what they do in in the Netherlands and the Philippines; plastics used in supermarkets to package food are already biodegradable.

Singing Tree Rings

Created by Bartholomäus Traubeck, Years is a record player that translates the yearly
rings of a tree into sound. Using a ps eye camera, the grain on the slices of wood
is read and converted into music.

Have a listen to the unearthly sound:


Years - 'scratching' from Bartholomäus Traubeck on Vimeo.

For more info... click here.

Tree Tourniquet

How to kill a tree. 

These poor suffering trees have since been replaced... without the fatal guy wires.

Cornell Cooperative Extension states, "Do not stake unless absolutely necessary. Staking is necessary only if trees are planted in a very windy area. If a shade tree will not stand up 

on its own in a windless site, choose another tree."