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| Pictured center, we see the withered trunk from a mature red bay (Persea borbonia), which did not survive the 2011 drought. |
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| Today it was removed from the landscape. After a decade of decay, the red bay trunk was so thoroughly rotted that it barely weighed anything. |
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| Some years ago, a hybrid oak tree volunteered along the upper drainage, in one of our stands of titi (Cyrilla racemiflora). It was never welcome among the titi, and, once it was identified by arboretum staff, it was routinely cut back but never fully removed. |
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| Today we removed two and a half feet of its bare trunk. |
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| Two years ago, we removed 95% of this hybrid mulberry, when it was quite a large specimen. Only red mulberries (Morus rubra) should be in the arboretum, while this one was at least partly a white mulberry. |
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| An ugly stump is gone. It will no longer be an eyesore, or serve as a lookout tower for ground-foraging beasts. |
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| Speaking of eyesores, walking from the Student Union Building toward the Fitness Center, one might have noticed an ugly titi trunk. In the photo above, we see one trunk leaning toward the right; this tree grew in the direction of our long, wooden footbridge that spans the western drainage channel. As a result, we were forced to make several cuts on this tree to encourage growth away from the bridge. The plan never really worked, and we were simply left with a mutilated trunk. |
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| By cutting it back to the ground, the remaining shoots coming from the ground will have a better opportunity, and perhaps we will do a better job at redirecting them away from the pedestrian path. |
