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Leyland Cypress. Many of you (especially UK bakers) will be familiar with the relentless spread of this horrid, non-native, unnatural, bastardhybrid tree. Within a parkland setting, allowed to grow a large specimen, it has certain majesty. However in the last twenty years huge numbers have been planted
by impatient, ignorant homeowners as superquick landscape screening in urban areas. Many have been allowed to grow far too big, ruining vistas, causing disputes between neighbors, damaging buildings, killing native plants and sucking the life out of the soil they grow in. They are almost completely devoid of associated fauna.
Most traditional methods for clearing away these weeds are hard work and either very obvious or dangerous - chainsaw, ringbarking, winching etc. Pouring soluble herbicides into the ground around them uses nasty chemicals, can show up later in the wood and still requires one to actually go very near the trees on at least one occasion.
So shoot them. Use a .22 air rifle with copper hunting pellets. These are sold for shooting small, thick skulled animals such as hares. The pellets easily penetrate the bark layers and come to rest within the cambium/phloem tissues, poisoning the sap. The entry wounds will heal over before the tree dies making detection difficult. Two shots per metre of the quarry's height should show in the foliage within a season, repeat if necessary.
May be illegal in some countries. Exercise caution when using firearms in public places.
Basic description of target.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leylandii
[rainbow, Jan 02 2006]
Not to be confused with these
http://en.wikipedia...iki/British_Leyland
[Ling, Jan 04 2006]
The real guerilla gardening
http://en.wikipedia.../Guerilla_gardening
slightly off topic [sophocles, Jan 05 2006]
Similarly Baked
http://today.reuter...UKOC_0_US-TREES.xml
This woman couldn't get hold of a gun and copper bullets, but still wanted a go. [dbmag9, Jan 07 2006]
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Annotation:
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I'm all for shooting trees. |
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I prefer to shoot the breeze. |
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Hmmm.... tree huggers vs. native species environmentalists... that could be better than Friday night smackdown. |
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I thought this would be a scheme to divert hunts from chasing foxes and to get them to track down and destroy Leylandii instead - ...the rumble of horses' hooves, the baying of the hounds getting closer and closer until the Leylandii at the bottom of your garden is surrounded by an excited throng of people, horses and hounds. Specially trained beavers are taken out of panniers on the horses to gnaw through the Leylandiis' trunks. As they crash to the ground the pack rides off to seek fresh prey... |
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I find shit to be offensive. |
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I know... We could all just sit around and shoot the shit. |
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(I just couldn't resist that one...) |
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[RayfordSteele] and [hippo], you two should collaborate on some entertainment media - I could be tempted to actually get a cable TV hookup if you do. |
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Synchronicity - just saw a Clarkson documentary about guns - Hiram Maxim used to demonstrate his machine gun by chopping down trees with it! |
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I tried copper nails in a tree in the garden, but nothing happened. Obviously I used the wrong copper. |
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Yet another thing the police are completely useless at, [Ling].
/sigh
(Don't shoot my bad puns! Focus on the trees! THE TREES!) |
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Don't be so hard on them: I generally find them to be fine upstanding members of our society. |
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[Hippo] - Beaver hunting? |
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[hippo] trained beavers..beautiful. i wanted to post in gardening:guerilla but it doesn't exist yet. i have several ideas that could be classified such. |
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[Ling] copper is definately highly toxic for trees. it may be that the nails didn't actually get through the dead tissue (bark) to the cambium. bark can be inches thick on some species. |
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[Murdoch] should work on rhodos too, although some type of copper machine gun may be required having seen the mess it is making of your fantastic landscape. if the upcoming phytophthora epidemic doesn't get them. |
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[Ling] most copper nails you buy at hardware stores have protective finishes on them that prevent the copper from chemically interacting with the tree. (if they didn't, copper nails would turn green after a while from oxidation) |
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[rainbow] Mostly the HalfBakery operates on the principle that categories are created as needed. So if you post lots of guerrilla gardening ideas, a "Home: Garden: Guerrilla" or "Home: Garden: Evil" category might be created. Two or more ideas are required for a category and there's nothing to stop you putting a plea for a new category (and references to other ideas which should be in that category) in your idea somewhere. |
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My copper nails were made from stripped single core wire - no coating, and quite long. I banged in quite a few, but to no avail. In fact, I think the tree just grew faster and shed even more leaves in the winter season. |
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Maybe not enough surface area? |
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[Ling] Most drugs are just really, really toxic things in very, very small quantities... perhaps it was that because of the size of your tree, the copper nails were simply making it high? |
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It's cheaper to nail pennies in deeply with an axe. |
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They still use copper in pennies? |
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You know, this may be the start of a new category. First there was [Bonsai Bullets], and now an anti-tree bullet. |
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I want to mount a tree's crown over my mantle. |
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[+], But, I'd only call this a sport if the trees could somehow return fire. Or move. Or both. |
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I'll repeat my personal definition of "sport" vs. "other game", as "a sport is something that would be very difficult or impossible to eat a sandwhich whilst doing". |
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Oh, [hippo] "Geurilla Gardening" is actually an existing term (which I occasionally practice) which is the non-violent planting of seeds in neglected property which is not your own. |
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Obviously you've heard the advice that inanimate objects can move just enough to get into your way. |
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I thought that the bark was the living bit, and the inside was all dead wood, [rainbow]. That's why people can fill up dead olive trees with concrete to stop them from falling. |
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I like this idea. I want to see people charging around the country shooting trees. Every year there should be a huge bonfire of all the trees shot in the year (that couldn't be used). |
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I can just see a hunter at the end of the day, tying his trophy trees on top his truck. |
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//Obviously you've heard the advice that inanimate objects can move just enough to get into your way//
Surely this is why we have copper mines? |
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