Goodbye Weed-Tree

Some decades ago, Icelanders discovered that certain poplar trees (aspir, see for example Populus trichocarpa) grew very quickly even on wind-crazed bare land and as a result they were planted everywhere.  These days people have started to view the poplars as almost weeds in habituated areas, because they have insane roots, and will spawn other poplars using their massive root system.  They are quite hardy too.

We knew from the start that we had one poplar in the garden of our new place, and on this beautiful day, we cut it down and poisoned it, in an attempt to get rid of it.  We did this because we’d found lots of mini-poplars around the big poplar, probably spawned because the previous owner had trimmed the poplar considerably about a year or so ago and it had felt threatened.

Some pictures: