not a great pic...

but it reminds me of a river birch ... which has known borer issues ... which might be why it disappeared ....

why do you want to know???

ken

Here is a link that might be useful: link

Thanks Ken. I'm just more interested in trees now and was taking another look. There was a small piece of stump/root presumably from that tree that sent up shoots but I dug it out a couple of years ago. The leaves were kind of generic/oval could have been birch, I didn't care too much about IDing them back then.

Maybe they took the tree out because of borers or other problems, maybe just because it was blocking the nice view to the west. There had been some big ugly power lines across the street so the tree would have blocked some of that, but when the utility undergrounded the lines maybe they thought the tree wasn't needed anymore.

My first thought from the ungainly look and crotch angles looked like a fast growing green ash. However, that picture was taken in the spring with the reddish bush just breaking into bloom and the lawn not completely greened up yet. Ash wouldn't have been breaking bud yet. So, next guess is that it was a chinese elm as the timing for some greenery is about right (it was probably blooming and setting millions of seeds to sprout up everywhere else in the yard). Nasty weed tree, excellent survivalist, great in harsh environments because it will survive and it is a tree, but not good in a residential lawn. Probably landed there as a seed and after a couple years, the previous owners cut it down before it became too big.

Nice powers of deduction! Here's some more info: the house was built in 1996 and I think the first owner didn't have many trees or landscaping. (But I think there would have been another tree planted in addition to the pine? Maybe it died). Our neighbors told us the first owner put in some terrible grass (tall fescue?) and you can still see some clumps in that spring picture, it's finally almost gone.

Anyway, the next people lived there from 2002-2010 and they filled the back yard with so many trees, most of them probably came from the local nursery (I found a tag on a few bushes). So I wouldn't be surprised if they planted something in the front, on the other hand they might have been happy to have a volunteer. They were definitely tree people.

There are some Siberian Elms growing like weeds in the general area (mostly in older neighborhoods and along some creeks/ditches) but none within a couple blocks that I have noticed. I had read somewhere that our area was too cold for Chinese Elm to do well but there may be be some around.

I'll ask some other neighbors if they remember the tree.

This post was edited by olreader on Sat, Nov 2, 13 at 11:36