I would respectfully disagree with your assessment. It's a gorgeous tree!
*And* those 'ornamental' fruits are delicious.

Dave

"Sunflower" wrote in message
...

"Jacquard_The_Ripper" wrote in message
news:3f0717f9.597720556@news...
Hi the

In my front yard I have a deciduous tree with maroon leaves--I don't
know what it is, but it was here when I moved in 12 years ago. It has
a nasty habit of throwing up runners within a 3' radius around the
trunk. Is there a better way to handle this than just me and my
pruning shears? It makes it difficult to plant flowers around it,
then runners appear everywhere in my beds. It also seeds itself
everywhere in the yard. The small seedlings are easy to pull out if
they are 6" or less, but those runners are driving me nuts. Any
suggestions?

Thanks,
Cynthia

What you probably have is an ornamental plum tree, usually the variety
Thundercloud. If you mow around the trunk you can take care of the
suckers
with minimal effort on your part. This is usually why they do not have
flowers planted around the base. The better and more permanant solution
is
to remove the tree entirely, and even then you'll be dealing with suckers
for quite some time as the roots will refuse to die in a timely manner.
It's
a very pretty tree, but it's far more of a pest than it's value as an
ornamental.

Sunflower
MS 7b