The incredible self-pruning Bradford Pear

The ice storm that roared through this weekend did quite a job on the trees in the Homeowners Association. All three of my trees were killed by the storm. Two of them were completely destroyed. The one in the front yard had on limb still standing, but at a dangerous angle toward the house. All of my trees were Bradford Pears. Yes, I know that the wood is very, very soft, but these trees grow so well here and they have that perfect gumdrop shape. One of the downsides to this type of tree is that they are "self-pruning" in even moderate breezes; that is, whenever the wind blows, they shed leaves, twigs and even branches. Toss on several hundred pounds of weight in the form of ice and you have a disaster like this:

Before:



After:



Another Angle:



Hrothgar motored through the neighborhood taking pictures from the toasty comfort of his ultra-deluxe, 3 miles per gallon SUV. As soon as the power came back on, he emailed the images out to everyone - along with this note:

It looks like we have a lot of clean up! The trees that incuurred the most damage are the bradford pears, the river birch trees and the cottonwoods. The bald cypress, hackberry, red maples, and the sycamores had the least damage overall. The trees that still had their leaves were hurt the most.

I'll post up a few of those later this week.