McLean Street, at its intersection with Willow Street on the harbour side, is closed as arborists work on the black cottonwood tree, known as the Aspen tree, which had a major limb fall yesterday.
Workmen examine the Aspen tree.
Teams of men are there making the tree safe and examining the cause of Monday's fall.
Early indications were that the fall was caused by the tree limb being too heavy for a rotten core that supported it.
The branch fell at about 9am on Monday, nearly crushing one of several cars parked nearby.
The tree was inspected on Monday by Tauranga City Council arborist Richard Conning. He has advised remaining large branches be pruned to reduce the risk of further branch failure.
This work is being conducted while a consulting arborist inspects the tree using a resistograph.
The resistograph uses a fine 2-3mm drill to venture one metre into the tree to measure structural information. The results of this will determine the degree of pruning required.
Tauranga City Council communications advisor Natalie Palmer says at this stage it is not likely the tree will need to be completely removed, although the work using the resistograph will be used to confirm this.
1 comment
Aspen Tree wood
Posted on 18-01-2011 12:33 | By Aster
Hope that some wood will be kept so that craftspeople in Tauranga could fashion coasters or some other type of souvenir of this historic old tree. A lot of effort has gone in over the years to keep his iconic tree in place. Time and Nature will win in the end! Good on the arborists and TCC for their efforts to save the old tree,which is believed to have grown from a stake that a colonial soldier used to tether his horse back in the mid 19th Century.
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