I’ve been seeing this one type of tree all over the industrial parts of portland,
so much so that I’ve been referring to it as the most common tree to pop up without purposeful planting
terms like volunteer tree, or weed, or invasive... or as this top search result says, undesirable...
and of course they also mention property value... a common theme in city ecology no?
I use this plant identification app called seek, a week or two ago it was finally able to identify this as tree-of-heaven,
turns out its not native to this area, and turns out once its established it will keep popping up,
like english ivy it just needs a bit of root in order keep spreading...
it sends out root suckers that produce clones and create groves,
I can atest as this wasn’t the first one I tried to harvest, when pulling one out you’ll realize that the roots often takes a 90° turn underneath the concrete or asphalt connecting to other sprouts.
it turns ot the tree-of-heaven is also like a hydra,
you cut it and it will react by producing even more sprouts.
so there’s a couple of important notes and takeaways that have been sitting with me;
the original plan was to locate plants inside of storm drains,
unfortunately the grates are too heavy to lift
this would be something of a service as storm drains should stay clear to prevent street flooding,
I decided that even though I was removing a plant from a spot it was living in, it is classified as a harmful weed by many, so no harm no foul,
on the flip side
since I tore it out, the tree-of-heaven will likely come back with a vengence--larger and stronger,
so any guilt that I had tearing it out
is this an act of “ruining” the streets? as in making a space closer to that of an ancient ruin?
an idea I’m attracted to... a positive form of property destruction?
adds another layer to the term “seed-bombing”
on a bonsai forum, people were advocating the you should burn the seeds as soon as the tree starts to produce the, it’s that good at spreading and dominating spaces
another note about my interest in the tree-of-heaven;
it’s an indicator species of human impact of our environments,
that being said it’s indicating things that are already visably easy to notice (unlike moss and lichen indicating air quality, or hydranga color changing with soil ph)
in north america tree-of-heaven finds success in
urban areas
road sides
railways
fence lines
forest openings or woodland edges*
*both byproducts of many things, but it’s not hard to link this to human activities; clearcutting, logging, and fires to name a few
it’s life that isn’t being cared for, yet persists--
taking over spaces in urban environments,
personally I’ll take what we can get but here’s a link to another top search result;
from penn state, it starts out as a general taxonomy before it goes all in on information about how to possibly kill it