Why do so many Toronto street trees die, but as Detroit Blog shows, trees can grow just fine on the top of abandoned skyscrapers. Maybe if we abandoned the city, the trees would grow. Though perhaps Detroit’s urban prairie is not the example we should look to here. Still, these are tenatious trees. Like the ubiquitous Tree of Heaven — or as the foul-mouthed vernaculars call them, the “cum trees” — found all over the city. They may stink, but they smell like summer in the city, which will be here, momentarily.
EDIT> As Sean says in the comments, check Detroit Blog’s resurgent nature post.
2 comments
This is fascinating. Visitors to the Detroit Blog be sure to click the “resurgent nature” link for more crazy text and pictures. It makes me want to visit Detroit, and I don’t even like to travel. What would Todd Irvine say?
There’s less salt, discared coke cans and cigarette butts on top of an abandoned building than at street level. My guess is these trees thrive because they don’t have to co-exist with our human garbage like street trees do.