Results tagged “tree”

As one man battles a ginkgo biloba tree in Brooklyn, another fights his own stinky tree situation in Queens. Barry Plonski's home on 210th Street and 43rd Avenue in Bayside is within smelling distance of multiple gingkos — and he places the smell they emit "at the olfactory intersection of animal feces and vomit." Female gingkos, the smelly fruit bearers, are the ones to blame — and there are about 15 in Plonski's neighborhood.

While some Brooklynites are lobbying to get trees removed from their neighborhood, Canadian street artist Poster Child is planting them around the city. There's already a dwarf pine in a long-retired newspaper dispenser on Bedford Avenue, and now he's gone and planted another in a telephone booth in Astoria. Personally, we'd like to see an entire greenhouse in one of the four remaining enclosed booths (as long as no one's using them anymore, that is). Challenge.

Seeing as how it takes the Parks Dept. 3 to 5 years to deal with tree problems, it's unlikely that Bay Ridge resident Richard Mahany will get the gingko tree that's stinking up his neighborhood removed any time soon. The Brooklyn Paper reports that the man is angry that the tree "dumps its foul-smelling fruit on the sidewalk in front of his 78th Street home."

Poster Child has finally brought a planter box to New York City! This dwarf pine is now planted outside of the Bedford Avenue L stop in Williamsburg; he explains his project: "If you are new to these FlyerPlanterboxes the idea is to take the empty & disused newspaper and flyer boxes that litter our sidewalks and put them to a better use than say trashcan or Space-Filler." And check out that newspaper dispenser, it's from The National, which debuted in January of 1990 and folded 18 months later. He notes, "this empty, useless box has somehow managed to consume valuable sidewalk space in New York for 16 odd years."

The Anne Frank Center USA in Lower Manhattan has chosen the eleven sites that will receive saplings from the horse chestnut tree that Anne Frank used to gaze upon while in hiding at 263 Prinsengracht. They announced their idea earlier this year, and now say that "the saplings are currently in a nursery outside Amsterdam and will be shipped to the United States before year’s end. They will be quarantined for two years to make sure they do not carry certain plant diseases." In New York, the sapling will go to the World Trade Center site.

All of the trees in Queens are leading to a ton of problems lately. First the decision to chop down a 600-year-old tree nearly tore a community apart, then trees were falling on top of houses during the great wind storm of early October, and now MyFoxNY reports that a group of angry homeowners in the borough are up in arms about a tree stump.

The Sunnyside blog posts about smidgen of paint spotted on a neighborhood tree (can you see it?). They report back enraged from the scene of the crime: "Graffiti bandits have sprayed a tree on 44th Street in the Gardens with purple paint. The oak tree is not in any danger, but it shows that some of these vandals will not stop at anything." What's next... banana peels on the sidewalks?! These heathens will stop at nothing! Seriously though, it sort of just looks like an accident.

With the wind blowing down trees out there today (seriously, watch out, one "city-owned tree" just hit a house in Queens), and the 600-year-old tree being torn down before it rots out and falls over, CityRoom asks where the oldest tree in the 5 boroughs is.

If the trees in this city could talk... this one would have a lot to say. The massive white oak in Little Neck Bay in Queens is "believed to have been born in an open meadow before Columbus arrived in the New World." In 1997 it was even granted landmark status, but now it's being dismantled because it's rotting.

       

Last Tuesday, a sudden storm which downed hundreds of trees in city parks, creating what the Parks Department called the worst damage in 30 years. Our own Joe Schumacher visited Central Park and said the devastation was "heartbreaking" and took note of a raccoon who was confused: "The raccoon was disoriented. It went up and down the tree, looking around. It seemed like it didn't know what to do."

The toll for trees lost in Tuesday's sudden thunderstorm now stands at 500, at least. The NY Times watched the Parks Department's "arboreal trauma team [fan] out through the hardest-hit sections of Central Park and Riverside Park, mapping the devastation for hard decisions ahead"—as in, whether trees will have to be taken down. Several hundred trees were downed in Central Park; "Riverside Park lost 65, Randalls Island lost 35, Thomas Jefferson Park in East Harlem, 3." Trees planted decades ago—Parks Commissioner Adrian Benepe said two buckeyes, damaged from the store, were probably from the 1920s or 1930s, "but we won’t know until the ring count"—are lost and are being mulched. The Parks Department replace them soon and Benepe said, "Our grandchildren will get to see them."

Tuesday's night sudden storm damaged numerous trees, from the Upper West Side to Central Park and into Harlem and the Bronx. The devastation was especially stark in Central Park, where Parks Commissioner Adrian Benepe lamented to the NY Times, "It created more damage than I’ve seen in 30 years of working in the parks."

     

Last night's storm tore through the Upper West Side and Central Park, tearing trees out of the ground and throwing them across streets and onto cars. Our weather guru Joe Schumacher said, "Within the larger area of rain there was a smaller, intense area that crossed the Hudson and Upper West Side and then went up through Central Park and Harlem before heading into the Bronx."

            

The summer storm that rolled into town a couple hours ago was brief but powerful: There are a number of incidents about downed trees all over Manhattan (see the Gothamist Newsmap), such as "Trees down at West Side Hwy & 70th St," a "downed tree on a taxi" on E 86th St, and "Tree down on a car" at Riverside Dr & 101st St (a tipster writes, "Man was stuck under car for 20 minutes after an entire tree fell on him while he was driving in Riverside Park on 101 st)—some even have requests for "additional chain saws"—we hope no one was hurt.

With his family keeping vigil at the hospital, 33-year-old man remains in a coma after being struck by a tree branch in Central Park yesterday morning. An uncle of Sasha Blair-Goldensohn, an Upper West Side resident and an engineer at Google, told the Daily News, "I'm not worried about Sasha because he has IQ to spare... He hasn't really woken up. He's young and healthy, we're hopeful."

Earlier this morning, around 8 a.m., a 30-year-old man was hit by a large tree limb in Central Park, near West Drive and 63rd Street. The branch hit the man's head— he was struck unconscious and had severe bleeding. My Upper West adds, "Paramedics and police promptly arrived to the scene, and after about 15 minutes, took him to a hospital, where he seemed to be in serious condition." On Sunday, strong thunderstorms downed numerous trees in the city. Update: The Parks Department tells WCBS 2 "the limb is from a Pin Oak Tree, approximately 4 inches in diameter." Update 2: The man is now in a coma (it's unclear if it was medically induced) at Cornell Medical Center. The Post says first responders found him "unconscious and in cardiac arrest," while WCBS 2 reports, "The scene was such a mess it took nearly two hours for crews to clean up the debris and blood from the pavement."

When it's nature versus hipsters, nature usually wins. First it was the Brooklyn Kickballers being scared of the newly planted saplings in McCarren Park, and now this. The Daily News reports that 23-year-old Justin Calicchio was playing a game of dodgeball in Carroll Park yesterday when a tree branch came out of nowhere and pinned him to the ground. Yikes. He told the paper from his hospital bed that, "I blacked out. Everything is starting to become clear again. My girlfriend has been telling me about it and I'm starting to remember now." He is suffering from back injuries but was told he barely dodged more serious problems. A friend reported back saying the branch was too big and fell too fast that there was no escaping it. Calicchio has lived in Carroll Gardens his whole life, and says the tree has always been there, and "branches have fallen off before." Paging the Parks Department!

A woman whose wallet was stolen from her purse in Central Park in 1982 finally had it returned to her last week after a worker found it stuffed inside the hollow of a dying cherry tree near Rumsey Playfield at East 72nd Street. The cash was gone (except for a single penny) but the discovery was essentially a time capsule for Upper East Side resident Ruth Bendik, a 69-year-old health care professional. She vividly recalls realizing her Reagan-era wallet was lifted one day while in she stood in a crowd watching the New York City Marathon. Fast-forward to last Tuesday, when a tree-care supervisor for the Central Park Conservancy found it after he took down the tree, cut it into large pieces, and began to root around inside a hollow to finish the job. The blue leather wallet was encrusted in dirt but still contained retro credit cards from Bell Telephone and Manufacturers Hanover Trust Bank, as well as Bendik's employee ID from Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center (right). Bendik's $20, however, was nowhere to be found. The wallet was turned over to the police, who returned it to Bendik the next day, according to the Post. The thief remains at large, but the trees are obviously mixed up in this somehow.

On Thursday, the Staten Island Advance reported that a 7-month-old tabby cat had been in the tree for four days. Luckily, on day five of her arboreal getaway, Dottie the kitten was rescued, thanks to some patience and the efforts of some nice folks.

The horse chestnut tree that Anne Frank wrote about in her diary while hiding from the Nazis has been battling fungus infestations, and at just under 200 years old it may get a new lease on life. CityRoom reports that the Anne Frank Center USA (run out of an office in SoHo) wants to plant ten saplings from the tree in U.S. cities, including New York. Executive director Yvonne Simons told the site, “What we really hope to do is plant them in areas across the U.S. as a symbol of the growth of tolerance,” and noted that the aim is to plant one around the National September 11 Memorial and Museum at the World Trade Center. In the '60s, Anne's father Otto said in a speech, "How could I have suspected... how important the chestnut tree was to her, as I recall that she never took an interest in nature. But she longed for it during that time when she felt like a caged bird."

Wind gusts of up to 60 mph swept into the region yesterday, downing trees and utility poles, killing three people and injuring many others. Neighborhoods were without power, some bridges were temporarily closed, and airports delayed flights until the winds slowed in the evening. A meteorologist told the Daily News, "We often see storms with gusts around 40 mph. We had widespread gusts of 45-55 mph with some up to 60 mph. That extra 10 mph makes a big difference."

Don't just toss your tannenbaum out onto the sidewalk; this weekend there are two events designed for the ultimate holiday arboricidal massacre. First up is the city's annual MulchFest, which invites you to bring your tree in to a designated city park (they'll open up shop in all five boroughs), where it will be turned into nourishing mulch. "You are encouraged to bring bags to take advantage of the free mulch" that will be provided at certain sites. More details here.

Two Australian tourists got very up-close-and-personal with Central Park nature yesterday when a tree fell and its branches knocked them down. WCBS 880 reports that Melanie Ciancio and Brooke Spagnolo, who were getting their portraits drawn, "weren't seriously hurt"; one told NY1, "Suddenly we hear this crackling noise and then we were just on the floor and hit to the ground and the branches were on top of us and we crawled out and it was really surreal and weird, just really shook us up." They were in town for Ciancio's 30th birthday and "were impressed at how quickly passers by and EMS officials arrived to help." The park's department thinks wet soil contributed to the tree's fall.

          

Last night, the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree's lights were turn on for the holidays. With 30,000 lights on 5 miles of wire and a 750-pound star at top, it dazzled the crowd. A family of Hurricane Katrina survivors whose new home was partly built by lumber from an old Rock Center tree was on hand for the lighting; mother Tracey Davison told the AP, "It's been an awesome experience. I have a famous living room because of the tree from last year, and my girls and I have had a spectacular trip to New York for the first time."

Tonight marks the 76th Christmas tree-lighting ceremony for the city's most famous holiday spruce in Rockefeller Center. This year's 72-footer will be lit up at exactly 8:58 p.m., shining 30,000 energy-efficient LED lights on what's sure to be a large crowd (though last year people complained it wasn't bright enough).

A corrections officer was seriously injured when a large tree fell on her yesterday afternoon. The incident occurred around 4:35 p.m., at Fresh Pond Road and Myrtle Avenue in Ridgewood, Queens. It's believed the tree was rotting, so when a train on the elevated track rumbled by, it finally fell. According to WABC 7, witnesses (the street was closed for a street fair) "saw the thick trunk breaking off, hitting the woman, who had been walking on the sidewalk with her sister. It struck her right in the head and trapped her under its weight." The woman is in critical condition at Wychoff Hospital.

Yesterday, some neighborhoods were dealing with the aftermath of rains and 60 mph winds that swept through their neighborhoods. And luckily the casualties were mostly cars and trees, as WCBS 2 shows, though there were some power outages (downed power lines).

amNewYork is reporting that some non-"green" grinches are boo-hooing the LED lights on Rockefeller Center's tree this year. Powered by solar panels and lit up with 30,000 energy-efficient LEDs for the first time in history, the environmentally friendly decor just isn't doing it for some holiday revelers. Guess it's not the 1930s anymore.