"Joe Doe" wrote in message
...
In article
65F4392C99DB5A9E.3EAAE84D510AC2E6.EA7F7749D472818 ,
(Babberney) wrote:

Regarding my earlier challenge, in the ligustrum post above, the
biggest weed in TX would be the Hackberry tree in my friend's world
view.

k

Why exactly do people hate Hackberries? For example, Howard Garrett likes
your friend calls them weeds and says dont, plant and if present remove.

The only hackberry I liked was the one that fell and destroyed the back
end of my house. It depreciated the value to the point where I could afford
to buy it.
There was damage to fences and outbuildings all over the place from
hackberries. They tend to split and drop major limbs or break off at the
trunk. They are also fast growers that outpace and stunt all other trees in
the vicinity. Their wood is useless. I do appreciate their gnarled beauty
from regrowth of their broken limbs as long as they are far away from
anything they can damage. The rotten trunks also attract ladderback
woodpeckers.
Pecans, in my experience, drop much smaller limbs. Their wood can can be
used both decoratively and as firewood. And, you can eat pecans.

I recently bought a place with 3 dying Hackberries which I had to have
removed. In researching them to decide whether or not to have them
removed I came upon the opinions cited and the fact that they drop limbs
and are generally ugly. The suggested lifespan was 60-100 years (my trees
were quite massive and probably in the high end of the age range which
made it easier to decide to remove them because of their poor condition
and they had already dropped a bunch of limbs). However, all souces said
they were very well adapted and draught tolerant etc.

In researching trees to replace the ones I removed I find that many trees
that people love seem to have similar "problems". For example the usual
list of authors on texas trees like Chinese Pistachoes or Pecans. Both
however drop limbs (the Chinese Pistacho is called "self pruning" which I
interpret to mean it drops limbs) and Pecans have brittle wood. Pecans
also make one hell of a mess with nuts etc. So why is limb dropping for a
Hackberry bad but on a Pecan acceptable?

I really would like to understand why Hackberries have such a bad
reputation?

Roland