Usually your county extension office can send you a list of trees NOT
recommended for your area (particularly for street trees). That list will
include most trees that are "trashy" in your area. In the northeast, Norway
maples are trashy - where I live they are behave relatively decently. Silver
maples are on nearly everyone's list, because of their propensity to drop
enormous limbs without warning - hence sometimes called widow-maker trees.
Cottonwoods and other poplars have similar behavior. Other trash trees are
in the eye of the beholder. No one who has ever stepped on a horse chestnut
(buckeye), a sweetgum ball, or a sycamore ball with a barefoot would ever
deliberately plant one in his yard. However, the fruit is not quite reason
enough to cut down what might otherwise be a gorgeous healthy tree. I
imagine that some people in the midwest have similar sentiments about osage
orange. And catalpas, while gorgeous in flower, can also drop limbs
occasionally, and for sure lots of big pods which don't go away by
themselves...
"Ted Shoemaker" wrote in message
om...
Hello,

I have heard and read the expression "trash tree", but I don't know
what it means. If some trees are going to be offensive to my
neighbors, I want to know before I plant it! (And it's not as simple
as just asking my neighbors before buying. Lots of people don't know,
for example, what a blackgum, buckeye, or Euonymus is.)

So,
(1) What does the expression "trash tree" mean?
(2) How/where do I find out, before buying and planting, whether
species XYZ is a trash tree?

Thank you very much!

Ted Shoemaker