Watch It Bud . . How “Bloomie” Are Things After Bloomie’s Falls? (Revisited- #2)

This is our second post in a series where we are watching the Honey Locust trees on the Brooklyn Heights Promenade this spring to see how well they might recover from the Waterfalls project that was self-congratulatorily masterminded by Mayor Bloomberg last year. Our first post, earlier this week was Watch It Bud . . How “Bloomie” Are Things After Bloomie’s Falls? (Monday, April 27, 2009).

Today we have more bad news. (See photo above, click to enlarge.) While we think we correctly noted that the trees affected will need to struggle back from the salt-induced dieback we described in our last post, it appears that some of the trees affected are in far worse shape than we previously noted, with limbs that are hardly leafing out at all.

Here are pictures showing the status of the “bud watch” today.

A Control Group: Healthy Honey Locust Trees That Were Far from the Waterfalls

Here are photos (click to enlarge) of healthy Honey Locust trees budding. (As we previously noted, you have to walk far to get a good control group because the salt spay from the falls affected trees on the Promenade to some extent as far away as Clark Street.) On the healthy trees the buds are opening robustly all along the branches right out to the tips.

Most Damaged Honey Locust Trees

Here are photos (click to enlarge) of Honey Locust tree buds on trees that were near the Waterfalls and are struggling to come back. (See also the opening photo.) On some the budding is not as robust and there is no budding at the branch tips indicating that there may be a fair amount of dieback from which the tree will need to recover. On others large limbs are showing little sign of life. If anything, these trees ought to be further along at this point since they are located where they get more sun.

(For another story to keep you au courant on Brooklyn Heights Promenade matters, see this report on Brooklyn Bridge Park progress: Park Progress: Pier 1 and More! (Ninth Report).- We met fellow blogger Claude Scales out working on his story when we were photographing the trees.- The Bloombergian angle on the progress with the park? We have offered our analysis that it is another example of a situation where false equations introduced by a Bloomberg idea for “public private” partnership have resulted in interminable and unnecessary delays. See # 4 in our: Un-funny Valentines Arriving Late: Your Community Interests at Heart, Monday, February 23, 2009.)