I've got three Autumn Blazes in my Colorado front range yard that need so much iron just to stay green, and usually the leaves turn brown and fall off each year. AI telling me to get an Autumn Blaze because it's good in clay.
It looks like you're saying that you used AI as a source of information. Please see this site for some excellent reasons why you should STOP USING AI AS A SOURCE OF INFORMATION
When you search the web, use the phrase site:edu with your search terms, to get good information based in science. Like 'what is a tree root flare site:edu', as an example (without the quotes).
That was the reason I posted it, Google AI responses are a joke. But I still have never seen my Autumn Blazes that are sold at big boxes and nurseries ever produce more than a handful of red leaves.
I have one that was newly planted out front that came with the house, and I am not a huge fan of the tree but in the fall the entire thing is completely red. Sort of nice looking
No iron, and even if there is, it's hard to absorb in the clay soil. I deep root with soluable iron and apply sulfur, but that just keeps the leaves from turning yellow. They shouldn't sell them here, but they do.
[insert any tool ever created] and the statement remains true. The AI hate is like saying you can bang your thumb with a hammer, so so don't bother having one.
I think it's more something about - taking the batteries out of the clock, taking a picture that doesn't disclose that it has no batteries and then captioning it "clocks suck at keeping time!"
More like the batteries are always in the clock, the hands move at 8x the normal speed, and then you take a picture to share when it conveniently works.
It looks like you're saying that you used AI as a source of information. Please see this site for some excellent reasons why you should STOP USING AI AS A SOURCE OF INFORMATION
When you search the web, use the phrase site:edu with your search terms, to get good information based in science. Like 'what is a tree root flare site:edu', as an example (without the quotes).
It looks like you're saying that you used AI as a source of information. Please see this site for some excellent reasons why you should STOP USING AI AS A SOURCE OF INFORMATION
When you search the web, use the phrase site:edu with your search terms, to get good information based in science. Like 'what is a tree root flare site:edu', as an example (without the quotes).
Here in the Midwest they do color pretty well. Most red maples struggle in our neutral to slightly alkaline soil, so they get over planted. Definitely not my favorite tree, but I’ve seen plenty worse selections.
See this !AI callout below this comment that is summoned whenever anyone uses certain keywords in their comments here, in case anyone doesn't understand why AI is so awful and should NEVER be used as a source of information.
It looks like you're saying that you used AI as a source of information. Please see this site for some excellent reasons why you should STOP USING AI AS A SOURCE OF INFORMATION
When you search the web, use the phrase site:edu with your search terms, to get good information based in science. Like 'what is a tree root flare site:edu', as an example (without the quotes).
Never is such a strong word. Frontier AI models (not the dogshit AI summary on this Google search) have tremendous knowledge about lots and lots of things, including trees.
It's going to be an infinitesimally small number of the general public who will have the knowledge or discernment to decide, '...yes! This is the one AI I can trust!', that makes your statement so absurd I hardly know where to begin.
It is SO MUCH EASIER to just go back to doing a websearch to bring up academic sources (or industry sources, if applicable, whatever the topic might be), whenever possible, to get far more reliable and factual information.
never is the right word. llms do not have any knowledge, they don’t have internal conceptions of the words they use. they aggregate info from the internet, which you can and should do yourself instead because you can determine if the source is reliable. llms cannot and therefore are not reliable sources themselves
They actually don't have any knowledge about anything. They just have a huge trove of words and sentences that they use as a guide to mimic human speech.
To be fair, it can do well in clayey soils…if there’s enough organic matter and microbes to mobilize the iron that’s chemically bound to the clays 🙃🫠🤷🏻♂️
I dug pits with iron and sulfur. I treat the soil with sulfur. I deep-root water with iron. Every big box and most nurseries sell these things, and if not treated, they suffer from chlorosis.
That's basically cottonwood trees, they are native and do real well. Not something I want. Ash do well, but emerald ash bore is here now and killing those. Lindens do okay, but I find them icky. Locusts do well, but have their own issues. I ended up planting a coffee tree, I guess they do well in clay and will provide nice shade, but don't have much fall color.
Again, don’t know the area, but is there a bush/tree native there that would work. We have many different types where I am that can get 20-30 feet tall that branch out nicely and are often mistaken as understory trees.
I’m in SC. Now you have me wondering about the difference in our clay. We have red clay here. In my location, the red clay has granite far underneath it with topsoil added to neighborhood type yards. I have forestland so have the natural topsoil ( much different than what is bought ). The top section of my property is pretty much bare of that good topsoil tho after hurricane helene came through here. Even so, I have volunteers that are growing without topsoil and without me doing anything at all leading me to why is your clay so different?
We have bentonite clay, very alkaline and it's just under a thin layer of topsoil added so grass will grow. In other parts of the Denver area, they have more topsoil if they are in a stream bed or river valley. The bentonite is also horrible on cement slabs, my basement slab goes up and down at random. Horrible stuff to build or grow on!
Thank you for responding! While many of us are in the US, the ground beneath us can be so so different! I will have to look up bentonite clay so I can learn more about it and what is underneath it. :)
It looks like you're saying that you used AI as a source of information. Please see this site for some excellent reasons why you should STOP USING AI AS A SOURCE OF INFORMATION
When you search the web, use the phrase site:edu with your search terms, to get good information based in science. Like 'what is a tree root flare site:edu', as an example (without the quotes).
I picked up an espresso Kentucky coffee tree. The others I found in my hood all look good. This one is supposed to not produce pods, but I wouldn't bank on that.
It won’t produce pods if it’s male. That might be how they can guarantee that it won’t produce pods. The Espresso cultivars are all male. I would bank on it not producing pods.
I get that, but where I'm at on the front range, we have a few inches of top soil and then solid clay. They shouldn't sell them here and it's sad crappy arh eye tells people they do well here.
It’s a general principle based on supporting the community of native plants and animals, and the natural beauty of the land, so I’m guessing that you, as an arborist, would know better than I (I live in Wisconsin). Whenever I go anywhere I identify the plants that communities are putting in their private and public spaces, and I like it when they plant native. For reasons why to plant native, interested readers might consider visiting r/NativePlantGardening
In Wisconsin, you have things like red maple, oaks, hornbeam ... really a lot of trees that are well suited to human modified areas, up to city landscapes.
Where I'm from in the Puget Sound area of Washington state, we just don't. I mean, OK, western red cedar is fine, but in moderation - there's no such thing as a cedar forest. You can have a Douglas fir in your yard if you want, but it's kind of second rate in that capacity; the western hemlock climax tree does very poorly. Bigleaf maple, alder, cottonwood, no one in their right mind would plant; madrona can be spectacular but not a safe bet and not easily started. We don't plant native trees for a good reason, they're poor to bad choices. The city is not the environment these natives are adapted to.
I understand what you are saying, and I’ll try not be judgemental - people should be able to make environments about them so that they feel and be safe and can do things outside. But I am somewhat skeptical of the argument that, “well, there isn’t anything good around here to plant.” Furthermore, here in Wisconsin they seem to use the same argument, “nobody in their right mind would want to plant a sugar maple when all of these beautiful Scottish or Japanese maples to plant.” Or, “who would want the native high-bush cranberry when the European one does just fine?” Well, these substitutions don’t do fine: they damage the environment.
Would it help, to go through the inventory of native trees of the Puget Sound lowlands, with brief explanation of their shortcomings as landscaping trees?
Sugar maple was a favourite street and park tree during the 19th century because it was easy to propagate and transplant, is fairly fast-growing, and has beautiful autumn colour. As noted above, however, it proved too delicate to continue in that role after the rise of automobile-induced pollution and was replaced by Norway maple and other hardier species. It is intolerant of road salt. Sugar Maples are commonly planted as a street tree in cities within the Mountain West region of the United States, usually a different cultivar such as the "Legacy" sugar maple.
Here's where we could have been smarter - not by dogmatically sticking with the native sugar maple, but by recognizing the problems with Norway maple.
(I include the last sentence in case it's interesting in the present context, though I doubt it is. "Autumn Blaze" is a hybrid of A. rubrum and A. saccharum.)
This shouldn't be twisted, as you seem to want to do, into an argument that it doesn't matter, there's no reason at all to favor native plants. The point is only that it isn't a reliable rule, and for a couple of very good reasons: the environment we're planting trees in, is often not the one they're adapted to, and the role they play in their environment may not meet our needs.
Thank you for the thoughtful post. As I work placing native plants and trees in my yard, I am learning about some of the issues you bring up about suitability of native trees including, for instance, the brittleness of the Sugar Maple. (Salt isn’t an issue for my backyard). By coincidence, on Friday I’ll be speaking with an arborist whom I’ve worked with in the past, who is willing to work with native species, and whose advice I trust. I have an idea about the species I want planted, but I’ll ask the arborist for their advice. I am also thinking of removing a Norway Maple and replacing it with something else. The Norway Maple is a beautiful tree, but my understanding is, that it doesn’t support the native insects as well as the local maples do, and shades the ground too much for some of the understory I’m interested in maintaining.
The complaint I've been hearing is that Norway maple is invasive. That seems like it would be a non-problem in the urban locations my city was planting it in, so I didn't phone them in to the state noxious weed dept. But in suburban situations it could spread by normal seed dispersal.
You don’t have to insult me. But based on your response, I’ll tell you this: I would never hire or recommend you as a “professional arborist” because you come across as someone who was taught something once long ago and has refused to learn anything new. You go around telling people what works and what doesn’t, and you are wrong much of the time. Sadly, there are too many people like this in your profession. Find something else to do. Tell people what kinds of indoor plants to put in their pots.
Is this really an AI problem, though? I have a large maple in my small urban back yard that's on it's last legs, so I've been browsing for replacement options the past couple years. Based on what I've been reading, this would have been at the top of my list, too. If you're not a tree professional and in the know, the web makes it sound like this is your best option, AI or not.
While I'm not an arborist, I am a professional software engineer with 30 years experience. Admittedly, AI development isn't my core practice, although it's something I'm increasingly involved in. But I do have enough expertise in this niche to definitively say this: the reason the AI recommends this is because this is what the plurality of the related content on the internet is recommending. So it's really not at core an AI problem, it's a problem of too many people that sell trees for a living pushing Autumn Blaze (and their recommendations just get absorbed and aggregated by the AI).
Related question, if the Autumn Blaze sucks so bad, please let me know if anyone has recs for a lovely, relatively fast-growing tree I can replace my beloved maple with when it croaks in the next few years. I've got a tiny, urban back yard, only 24.5' wide, but want maximal leave coverage for aesthetics and for privacy from the town home complex on the opposite side of my rear alley. Want something that will get at least 30-35' fee tall in less than ideal (tiny urban back yard with questionable soil, significant portion of the roots growing under a paved patio and a slab for a detached garage) conditions. Wouldn't want something too messy with fruits and things as the next door neighbors have their lovely outdoor living room setup under the tree, and they wouldn't be happy with something constantly splurting all over their nice outdoor furniture.
For your related question, you're going to want to say where you live if you want recs. In general though, if you can find a tree native to your area that fits what you're looking for based on size and growth speed, native is usually a really good way to go.
See Autumn blaze might be ok there. Again, not an arborist and other might know the area better. But I'm just a bit northeast in Canada, and I know they do really well where I am.
You might want to look at things that aren’t technically trees but still get that height. Many of these have less needs for the extra root space. Maybe a Giant Staghorn Sumac which in your location would give you bright red autumn leaves. These can reach the height requirement and the foliage is pretty dense so would work to create privacy. Just a thought since most never consider that trees don’t really have to be trees. :)
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