PROJECT
PHASE 2: CALLERY PEAR GRAFTING PROJECT
April & May 2023 Pedestrians walking on Main Street near the intersection with Rock Street may notice three pretty strange and bare looking street trees this spring and wonder why anyone would prune a tree so severely. These trees DO look odd, but they are part of the Tree Advisory Board's novel approach to trying to solve the "problem" of the difficult Callery Pear street tree, an admirably tough but invasive and structurally weak tree that has been presenting numerous ecological and tree management headaches in the village over the past several years. You can learn more about these headaches and the issues involved the TAB's decision-making in our previous post here and in this Highland's Current article from June 24, 2022: Cold Spring's Novel Tree Experiment. Callery pears are one of the most common trees in our village's public street tree inventory and there are nearly two dozen young trees growing on Main St alone. Removal of all of these young and middle aged trees would drastically remove their wildlife habitats and leave a large number of unsightly and unshaded bare spots on our village streets, so the village is experimenting on a small-scale with a different approach. The Tree Advisory Board is hoping the trees can be transformed, through professional grafting, into less problematic trees. The three trees near the Main/Rock St intersection that were heavily pruned this spring represent PHASE 2 of a program to gradually replace Callery pear street trees, starting with those that have already sustained the most structural damage from storms, with other species of trees. The branches of a white-flowering native Amelanchier are the selection for this phase of the project. Passers-by will notice red wax and cellophane ribbons near the grafts and over the next few years, if the grafts are successful, new branches will begin to form the structure of a "new" tree on the "old" trunks. The new greenery will take a few years to establish a visually pleasing structure. TAB volunteers will be shaping the new branches and monitoring the progress of these trees on an ongoing basis and will evaluate the success of the project over several years. If it works, a PHASE 3 will be planned to gradually transform others. Anyone with questions about this project is welcome to reach out to the Tree Advisory Board at [email protected] or to the village clerk at (845) 265-3611 or [email protected]. |
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