I was recently staying at a New York Cheap Hotel and decided to do a little bit of research while I’m here visiting my ailing Uncle. I’m a Horticulturists and was interested in what kind of trees can survive in Manhattan and its surroundings. I read an article a while ago called Census Shows Street Trees Add Value to City Life. It reported that the Metropolitan New York City area has increased its tree population by 10 percent from 1995 to 2009.
This survey gathered this information by using more than 1,000 volunteers, I was quite impressed with the amount of volunteers that were even interested in helping out, they managed to log over 30,000 hours for what apparently is the largest participatory urban forestry project in the whole of the United States. Very impressive indeed. Through all the data collected, they found that this increase in trees looked pretty hopeful. But, a closer look reveals details using the most common tree species surveyed. The top ten, except two native trees: Green Ash and Red Maple, might have a substantial negative impact on urban sites and they might have a potential impact on the surrounding suburban areas. They observed that four of the top trees are not native to the United States.
Horticulturists, such as me, and urban foresters are now recommending planting eight of the surveyed tree species with a word of caution. The London Plane Tree , the Littleleaf Linden will quickly outgrow many, if not all, urban sites with limited space. I know for a fact that the Norway Maple and the Callery Pear are a very invasive plant and have escaped to the natural forests and are to be considered dangerous and harmful to all the native vegetation.
As I take a stroll outside of my hotel and see all the planted city trees, they are beautiful, but in the long term and cause much damage to New York’s natural forested areas. I do hope that many of those wonderful volunteers that helped with the report I read will also volunteer to keep an eye on the forested areas and take care of any growing issues.