Crews finished removing the last of Castro Street’s 170 Idaho locust trees last week, and began planting a mix of new species that the city hopes will cause fewer headaches for merchants.
Three years ago, the parks and recreation commission took up the cause of replacing the locusts (Robinia ambigua idahoensis), which had been put in when the city rebuilt Castro in the early 1990s.
“It was supposed to grow to be this really beautiful alley with flowering trees and all,” said Ronit Bryant, a former parks commissioner.
But the trees didn’t follow the plan. Branches broke during windstorms or on their own. An aphid infestation made the leaves shrivel up and created sticky droppings. Tree guards designed to protect the trees from parked cars wound up damaging the trees’ trunks.
“The trees were just not performing the way they were advertised,” said Bruce Hurlburt, the city’s park section manager who oversees the project.
Things were so bad that merchants regularly complained, particularly about the effect on outside dining areas.
“They were making a huge mess,” said John Akkaya, owner of Don Giovanni. “We couldn’t even open the doors.”
The commissioners asked the council to approve three new types of trees that appeared to be doing well in neighboring cities, including sycamores at each end of the street, Chinese pistaches in the middle, and crepe myrtles at intersections. The mix is designed to provide shade for diners and pedestrians and a colorful gateway into the downtown during the summer and fall.
The city replaced half of the old locusts last year in order to spread out the aesthetic impact on Castro. It is now planting the sycamores and refashioning the tree guards, making them shorter so they are less likely to rub against the tree trunks.
“It will probably be in the neighborhood of three to four years until these trees will be back to a decent size and it will start to look nice downtown,” said Hurlburt.
City officials hope the new breeds will be resistant to diseases and pests. Some concerns had arisen about the sycamores’ vulnerability to a powdery white mildew that makes their leaves shrivel and drop — but Hurlburt said the type the city is using has been hybridized for resistance.
“My experience over the years is that there is not a tree out there that doesn’t have something [bad] associated with it,” said Hurlburt. “There is no perfect tree.”
Bryant said she is optimistic about the mix the city has chosen.
“We now hopefully have trees that will thrive, and we’ll have the kind of canopy that we have wanted all along.”
E-mail Jon Wiener at jwiener@mv-voice.com
