March is a busy month for me.
I run around administering birth control several times a week.
Not to people, I don’t have that sort of training.
Suppressing fruit or seed pods from a tree can have a number of benefits. Sweet gum trees create spikey balls that weigh down branches and sometimes cause failures, tripping hazards and at the very least create an annoying mess on people lawns. Acorns from Oak trees can be an annoyance for folks who don’t want to hear them dropping on their roof all year long. This is not to mention undesired fruit production.
The trick is timing. This fiasco usually starts in early March with cherries. You see, I have to catch the tree in a very specific stage. I’m waiting for the tree to ovulate. Yep, trees ovulate in case you didn’t know. Depending on specie, their buds will start to flower at different times in spring. It has no bearing on what the leaves are doing, I’m watching the flower buds. If they make it to full flower, they will have been pollinated by our local bee population. Then that flower turns into a fruit or seed. It’s been fertilized. Sound familiar? Nature uses the same tricks in different forms and I think it’s beautiful.
This treatment does not harm the bee population. It’s an injection that doesn’t harm nearby trees, does not have lasting effects and can be skipped in order to allow the tree to produce fruit the following season.
This is another way arborists can improve people’s relationship with trees as an alternative to removal. Once they are gone they are gone and we advocate for retention whenever possible.
