I Finally Reported the World's Ugliest Tree

Today I finally made the call I've been intending to make for a couple years. I called the City of Alameda to ask them to evaluate the world's ugliest tree, which just happens to be in front of my house.

I really began to pay attention to this tree a couple years ago when I was taking an arboriculture class and had to do a tree report. For convenience sake, I did the report on this tree and believe me, there was plenty to report on. Poor branch structure, included bark, some old damage to the trunk (probably from a car clipping it), and to be brutally frank, just a general state of ugliness. The pictures here are from that report I did in late 2006. Time has not improved the situation. If anything, it's worse because there are now a couple obviously dead branches.

It'll be interesting to see how the city decides to handle this problem. I realize budgets are beyond tight and removing the tree and replacing it may not be affordable. But I would so love to see this thing gone and some tree with real potential put in its place. The city has recently updated its master tree plan and when I checked it, I found the report made the following recommendations for new/replacement tree plantings on my street:

• Silver linden
• Various American and hybrid elms
• New Zealand Christmas tree
• Chinese pistache 'Keith Davey'
• Scarlet oak

Any of those would be a vast improvement over the current tree, but the last three options on the list would really give some great fall color.

But I shouldn't get my hopes up. If the city decides that removal isn't a priority or in the budget, then the world's ugliest tree and I may still have a long future together.