BIKEPGH MESSAGE BOARD ARCHIVE

yeah, can't wait for next summer, for more reasons than just the trees, but it's pretty exciting.

stimulus money at work

yeah, can't wait for next summer, for more reasons than just the trees, but it's pretty exciting.

stimulus money at work

I saw the trees on Liberty, will be nice.

Lots of new trees, yay. I helped plant some of them, and it was great fun. I would encourage everyone to volunteer for planting next autumn.

Caitlin, do you have the source handy for trees reducing traffic speed? I'd love to read it if you do.

I'm wondering if I'll get my tree tonight. They broke up the sidewalk Monday night, took away the concrete bits yesterday... Tree tonight? It's not really mine as it's in front of my next door neighbor's house, but whatever. Close enough.

I live right on Liberty Ave. The city must be scouring their records—since I've been here they've put a bike lane right out front and now a sidewalk tree. I'm not sure what awesomeness will come next.

And the best part? In some form or another both examples — the bike lane and now the sidewalk tree — are due to the hard work of friends and friends of friends.

I love Pittsburgh.

I am trying to figure out when the trees are going in too... I see they have broken up a lot of sidewalk on liberty so maybe their method is to do all that then bring the tree? I doubt the rain has anything to do with it... they should be putting new soil in the pit too.

what are the chances that brad's going to get one of those poop smelling ginkgo trees

Believe it or not I've got a saw or two in the basement of this old house that would make quick work of a poop tree.

I know some cities ban female ginkgo trees for the poop smell reason.

Now if only we could get them all along Baum (which is German for "tree")

Doesn't this follow the old real estate adage, "Name the new thing after what you destroyed"?

But yes, a bazillon trees along Baum would be wondrous indeed. Go FPUF!

the Auto-Baum

whoa, that pun works two different ways.

like, uh, Audubon too.

double double entendre

double double entendre entendre

fixed

actually we do not plant female ginkgoes in the city anymore. It is kind of interesting how many females there are as street trees.. i mean, people knew they were problematic when they were being planted 15-50 years ago, right??

we love the male ginkgoes though, a good shape, hardy, nice leaves, good fall color....no fruit

so I thought, evolutionarily speaking, that the idea of a sweet fruit was to subsequently spread the seed. this tree seems to counter that idea. what animal in history ate dog crap tasting fruit?

and of all the non-native asian trees to introduce here... why not eucalyptus like california got?

Given the slow rate of evolution of the genus, it is possible that Ginkgo represents a pre-angiosperm strategy for survival in disturbed streamside environments. Ginkgo evolved in an era before flowering plants, when ferns, cycads, and cycadeoids dominated disturbed streamside environments, forming a low, open, shrubby canopy. Ginkgo's large seeds and habit of "bolting" - growing to a height of 10 m before elongating its side branches - may be adaptions to such an environment.

I think dung beetles like poop

I think dung beetles like poop

Hence the name...

actually ginkgo is in the fossil record in this area.... so we can debate its native-ness

sadly the lovely eucalyptus and many other awesome CA trees wouldn't survive, but you can get some that have been cultivated over time and selected for cold climates, like giant sequoias that don't get as ... giant.

sadly the lovely eucalyptus and many other awesome CA trees wouldn't survive

what about monkey puzzle trees?

can we get palm trees?

I've got to take down a few trees growing to close to my house. one is a locust, sprung from the others I've got on my property, including a giant on the has to be 50-6- feet tall. I hope it doesn't fal on my house when the time comes. The other tree is like a weed, grew like 10 feet in a year. I chopped it off about 3 feet from the ground and it is trying its darnedest to get going again.

I planted 4 trees this summer to make up for what I'm going to axe (well, chainsaw really). 2 Pawpaw trees and two others I forget. I like trees. Glad I have a big enough yard to have some. Glad the city is putting in more.

@erok fascinating

actually we do not plant female ginkgoes in the city anymore.

Sounds like sexism to me.

sadly the lovely eucalyptus and many other awesome CA trees

I was out in Santa Rosa, CA a couple of years ago and the people I was visiting blamed Jack London for the Eucalyptus trees and said they had become quite a hazzard fire and otherwise. They sure are spectacular though...

Props on the gingkos. That is one hardy tree.

Are any of these trees being planted with the fancy tree wells they put in at the August Wilson Center? That seems like a really cool idea and I'm hoping those trees thrive. So many street trees downtown seem distressed (or dead).

@jeffinpgh yeah, I was being facetious when I noted the eucalyptus. from what I understand it is invasive and problematic. but that's okay, australia got rabbits.

australia got rabbits.

North American got europeans.

North American got europeans.

Burn.

Heck, N Am got humans via that whole land bridge thingy. Europeans were just the latest infestation...

I just met this guy, http://anthropology.si.edu/staff/Stanford/Stanford.html

who read an interesting paper about the evidence that the land bridge theory is whack.

The newest evidence suggests that the first people came from northern europe over an ice bridge! There are a ton of pre-clovis and proto-clovis artifacts along with mammoth bones being found 180 miles off the east coast that predate any west coast human evidence by quite some time.

The history books need to be re-written soon

I should add that humans did in fact cross the land bridge as well. Just much, much later

So these artefacts are being newly found right now? Or they've been found for a while but this guy is the voice saying "hey guys, look at the dates here"?

This is really cool.

Is it consistent with Blitzkrieg theory (that sudden human appearance is responsible for the extinction of all the mega-fauna that used to be in N America)?

the artifacts are being found off-shore by scallop fisherman and this guy just happened to talk to one. The fisherman told him that all the scallop boats have maps of mammoth boneyards under the ocean because they fuck up the equipment on the ships. The captain then gave him a mammoth tusk along with pre-clovis points and walrus bones that predated the oldest west coast points by 15 or 20 thousand years. Basically the shoreline then was about 180 miles further out and they find these right along the edges all the way down to about south carolina. I don't know how this impacts the mega fauna situation but it sure did blow away the members of the east coast archaeological society. What a fun weekend that was.

some of my dates may be wrong. ugh. my gf is the archaeologist, I was just there for the free booze. This site has links to the pdf files for the original theory, the arguements and counter-arguements.

http://archaeology.about.com/od/skthroughsp/qt/solutrean_clovi.htm

my gf is the archaeologist, I was just there for the free booze.

amazing

I should add that humans did in fact cross the land bridge as well. Just much, much later

Helps explain Meadowcroft being so old.

I'd have gone for the free booze too.

heck yes, I met the head guy from meadowcroft as well.

I really like the direction this thread has taken.

Love the trees, now if they could work on the potholes...

My street tree has now been planted with fresh soil n'at in the hole.

I'm not into holiday decorations really, but part of me wants to cover it in tinsel.

what kind of tree?

Fill the potholes with trees?

I have no idea what kind of tree it is. One with branches? It certainly has branches and appears to be made of wood.

@ jeffinpgh

glad you liked the august wilson planting and the sweet soil cells, which house the soil beneath the sidewalk so that the trees grow larger faster, and so they don't up heave the concrete... but we can't do that to all the tree pits sadly. Hopefully the 30 square feet will be a big improvement over the previous ways of planting anyway? Soil cells are possible for new construction, but are also a bit expensive...

i also like the direction this thread has taken

oh and if anyone wanted to know more about the august wilson center:

http://pittsburghforest.org/augustwilsoncenter

That's my street tree being born last week.

I have no idea what kind of tree it is. One with branches? It certainly has branches and appears to be made of wood.

Brad, this may help:

Brad, was your tree planted by Charlie Chaplin? (love the photo)

sweet shot Brad

Regarding the secondary topic of this thread:

Quote:

So what caused the decline [of American megafauna]? The jury’s still out, says Willerslev’s collaborator Ross MacPhee of the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. Johnson notes that archaeologists are turning up evidence of humans in the New World before Clovis, and he suggests they overhunted the megafauna. The beautifully crafted fluted spear points linked with the Clovis might reflect strategies that developed once the giants became rare and harder to hunt, Johnson adds.

And back on the tree topic, last night the same guys who installed the tree outside my house last night came back, dug most of it up, seemed to replace it with different dirt, and then covered it with mulch. Interesting.

This is for all of the people that care about the day to day life of the street tree at 39th and Liberty.

I care about the tree.

but re: the megafauna/archeaology discussion, I just read a really good book called "Born to Run" by Christopher something, nothing to do with Springsteen, about distance running, human evolution, anthropology and archeaology. Explains why we are basically killing ourselves by riding in cars and watching TV, a good easy winter read, I'm recommending it to everyone.

re: digging up the tree

man we have had some problems with these contractors! they have planted some trees wrong and put some trees in the wrong places. they were required to go fix some things.

ha ha. our jobs are so similar sometimes

@caitlin belated thanks for the info. It would be great if trees planted around the new arena get that treatment. And I do hope they'll plant a couple trees up there somewhere...they do have those plant boxes growing on the fences.

re: trees at the arena. Lisa Ceoffe, the urban forester with city planning, is in charge of making sure all the new developments have the proper planting around them. some folks submitted plans for this prior to her hiring, and therefore some trees aren't quite up to par (see: bakery square)

she should be making sure that it's all good at the new arena. Also, the Uptown people are pretty much all about new trees, so hopefully that will help.

i think we need to re-introduce elephants. someone should eat our monkey balls.