Helping your street-tree knowledge branch out: New city map

| Environment | West Seattle news | West Seattle online

The City of Seattle’s online map lineup has a new addition. Not only can you find development projects, traffic times, and 911 calls on city maps, you can now look up street trees. For example, if you zoom to 35th SW, you can click on the dark-green tree cluster and find out about the famous European Hornbeams (the trees, shown in our 2009 photo above, just before getting special attention a couple years back from a group of professional arborists who donated their time and talents). The new map (explained here) comes just as the city gets ready to consider a new street-tree ordinance (find it here), as we reported here and here.

Junctioneer January 11, 2012 (4:30 pm)

Too bad it doesn’t list general street trees. Curious as to what those trees are in at least the southern end of the junction. They are not a good tree for street trees: if you park your car underneath one overnight your car will look wet with rain, but it’s actually sap that will stay all over your car and windshields until the next time you wash your car.

Been There January 11, 2012 (6:55 pm)

Juctioneer, The website does list general street tree’s. Play around with the sidebar on the right side of the page. Specifically, click on Table of Contents in that area. Hope you find it, took me a while:)
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According to the website, most of the street tree’s lining California Ave south of Edmunds as far as Dawson are Littleleaf or Bigleaf Lindens, with a handful of Black Locusts and Hawthorns tossed in. I presume what you are finding on your auto’s paint and windshield is the result of Aphids sucking/feeding on the leaves of the tree’s above, and not actually being emitted directly from the tree’s themselves.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphid

JoAnne January 11, 2012 (7:17 pm)

Has anybody read this control-freak legislation? It’s INSANE!
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They are basically taking total control over every minute decision that is made about any tree on a parking strip.
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Homeowners will pay a permit fee for doing ANYTHING at all to manage trees on parking strips on their property.
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However, we can’t do nothing because the city REQUIRES us to manage the trees according to its mandates!
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I wanted to prune my problem street trees, but now I’m getting rid of them quick before I have to be subjected to this craziness forever.

Tuesday January 11, 2012 (7:44 pm)

This is classic. Begging for road maintenance while we prioritize for a city tree map and ridiculous tree maintenance ordinances in a state that is positively lousy with trees. Who cares if someone cuts a branch that’s over 2 inches? I wonder how much it cost to produce and maintain a city tree map? I wonder if they could pass a tax levy to cover it? …I venture NOT. So I guess they’ll continue to try to charge fees for things people actually care about while these gems slide by without a second thought. Once again Seattle, well done!

Lola P January 11, 2012 (10:09 pm)

So… SDOT planted lots of trees along Fauntleroy between Alaska and Morgan a couple of years back. They don’t show up anywhere on the map, no matter how I play with it. What am I missing?

WSB January 11, 2012 (10:13 pm)

If you read the text on the accompanying linked page, I believe the surveyed information is NOT up to date. This is just their map of what they had in the system up to point X, which may have predated those trees. – TR

NGR January 12, 2012 (10:47 am)

@ Lola – the trees are there – click the ‘Public Right of Way Trees’ box in the table of contents

Been There January 13, 2012 (12:12 pm)

Anyone who gripes about street tree’s or the new website ought to try living in a part of WS or elsewhere in city that does not have curbs and sidewalks. Without curbs, sidewalks and the correlating planting strip one cannot and is not allowed by SDOT to plant street tree’s. What these neighborhoods are left with is a treeless streetscape that is anything but pleasant.

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