> The white pine blister rust pathogen is a typical heteroecious, macrocyclic rust that produces five distinct spore stages on two different hosts to complete its life cycle. The pycnial stage consists of pycniospores, or spermatia, which are haploid spores that fertilize compatible receptive hyphae. The two sexes are not distinguishable and are simply designated plus and minus. This is the stage where genetic recombination can occur that may lead to development of races of the rust. However, the nuclear cycle (i.e., dikaryogamy, diploidization, meiosis) of the blister rust fungus has not been fully determined, but is assumed to be the same as for other better known rust fungi such as Puccinia graminis. The aecial stage develops in host tissue occupied by pycnia the previous season (Figure 6). The fungus is perennial in the pine host and aeciospores are produced annually as long as the host tissues remain alive. Aeciospores are disseminated by wind over long distances, and Ribes spp. as far as 480 km (300 miles) from the nearest known white pines have been infected.

The only sensible definition I know of of "natural" is "according to the nature of a thing". Thus, human beings have a nature, and that nature is what determines what is good or bad for us. Arsenic isn't poisonous as such, but it is poisonous to us by virtue of our nature. We are rational animals by nature. And so, unnatural are things which depart from that nature, like the desire to eat glass or having a sexual interest in oak trees and so on. It is the nature of a thing that is the reference point that allows pathologies to be defined. By nature, we should have two arms, hence to lose or lack an arm is a defect. Similarly, psychological disorders only make sense with reference to the normative, which is defined by human nature. To say "everything is natural" renders the word meaningless, annihilating all justifiable and objectively normative statements, which is absurd. If everything is "natural", then nothing is unnatural, because natural is simply identical with everything.

Reminds me of SF planting Pōhutakawas everywhere - an NZ native tree that requires little water, don't fall over, don't fruit, etc. Except as any NZer could tell you, the reason they don't fall over is that they're evolved to grow on/around cliffs and loose earth, so they go all in on strong roots. Which mean constantly breaking roads and sidewalks. yay!

Also while they don't fruit they produce a tonne of flowers that produce a tonne of cruft on the ground :-/

Name three.

I can think of one: we landed stuff on the Moon and beyond. I think that otherwise, nature has a hard time reaching out beyond low Earth orbit.

Other than that, I can't think of anything we'd consider massive fuckups that nature didn't do better. We're definitely tamer than anything else, considering that life itself is a mass murder fest at every scale, from molecular to planetary.

Cut the tree down and leave 4-6” above the ground. Take a small drill and put a 3/8” drill bit in it. Try to find the small hole in the very middle of the trunk and drill down into it. This is how the sap flows through the tree. Carefully spray 3-4 good sprays of Glyphosate into the hole with gloves and eye protection. The tree and gravity will take this down into the roots where they will die. The small amount of Glyophosate will stay in the roots for approximately eight years, and it won’t leak out into the soil as it’s held by them.

That might only work for plants with "bursty" regrowth though.

Also, a spot treatment of the ends means considerably less herbicide entering the soil.

Disclaimer: While I am an avid gardener and I enjoy learning about the agricultural sciences, I am a computerologist, not a botanist, biologist, or chemist.

I don't know all there is to know about herbicides. I know there are broad-spectrum herbicides and selective herbicides, but I am only aware of two of them by name.

There's the well-known broad-spectrum herbicide glyphosate, of course, but it is absorbed by foilage and has low persistence in soil. This is why the application instructions typically say to apply in sunny weather when the winds are light and rain is not expected for several days.

Then there's tebuthiuron, another broad-spectrum herbicide. It's been almost fifteen years, now, but there was a famous case of landmark oak trees in Auburn, Alabama, being poisoned with Spike 80DF -- a specific formulation of tebuthiuron made by Dow -- by a rabid sports fan upset by the recent success of a rival. Because tebuthiuron is absorbed through the roots, has high persistence in soil, and inhibits photosynthesis, the trees were assured to die. My understanding is that this is an industrial herbicide, though, and may be difficult for consumers to obtain. It's banned in the EU.

Don't do what I did, which is to throw caution to the wind in frustration.

I was successful in killing a tree under my roofline. It was planted less than a foot away from the foundation and was difficult to prune due to its location amidst yews and aborvitaes. The trunk grew to about 3" in diameter before I decided to cut it down. I cut it down to about an inch or two above the ground. It was nothing if not insistent, though. It continued to put out new shoots and I would cull them and/or spray it with glyphosate when I noticed it. After a couple of years of this dance, I escalated things. I cut the trunk down beneath the surface so that no part of it was above the ground. I doused it with a number of chemicals based on advice I received. Eventually, it stopped putting out new shoots. Over the next few years, though, the pair of healthy, well-established arborvitaes about ten feet away on either side began to brown and die. I think it's quite likely that whatever I did to rid myself of the tree also contributed to the demise of my arborvitaes.

If I had to do it over again -- having the benefit of hindsight as well as the patience that comes with age -- I would have tried to suffocate and starve it instead of saturating the soil with something that may hang around to impose unintended consequences. Perhaps I would have had success cutting it beneath the ground and capping it with a sturdy container impermeable to light, water, and air. I would have periodically removed the cap long enough to eliminate any new branches or shoots that should threaten to breach the barrier. I would have done this until it exhausted all of its energy reserves trying to reach the light.

Cellulose is constructed from chains of glucose -- probably the most common carbohydrate produced via photosynthesis. Plants synthesize carbohydrates, store them in tissue, and later metabolize them via respiration. If one is both diligent and patient in limiting the plant's capacity to photosynthesize and respirate, I am sure it will eventually die.

Glucose photosynthesis: 6CO₂ + 6H₂O → C₆H₁₂O₆ + 6O₂

Aerobic respiration: C₆H₁₂O₆ + 6O₂ → 6CO₂ + 6H₂O + ATP

Good luck with your tree!

Japanese Cherries can be much more packed with flowers than this pear (It depends on the cultivar). Both Cherries and Dogwoods are royalty on gardens, but both deploy to much wider structures that can be low branched and tend to hang searching the floor, so this Pyrus is still pretty much unbeatable for narrow streets. Palms have their own problems, like thorns, but are "designed" for streets with extremely windy areas. The problem is that palms don't survive the same frost than pears can.

There are maybe five or ten trees so narrow in their category that, unlike conifers, bring blossoms, clean relatively dry fruits, and excellent fall colour in snowy areas. Some are among the most alien things that you can have in a garden.

And all that grows in such acute angles is prone to catastrophic cracks for wind damage. It comes in the package.

Having a Dogwood that would grow fastigiate retaining the "dog wood" part, would be a revolution, but is not available at this moment (and probably will never be). Dogwoods love the 90 degrees angle. I have a maple 'Tsukasa Silhouette' that would look great, but is too small, too expensive and too delicate to be used as that.

Pears are still one of the tastier fruits in a garden, not ornamental royalty, but food royalty for sure. I just ignore the short interval of smell as a necessary tax to pay.

[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6m-8l3V38Ps

"The federal ban was lifted in 1966, though many states maintained their own bans. Research showed that blackcurrants could be safely grown some distance from white pines and this, together with the development of rust-immune varieties and new fungicides, led to most states lifting their bans by 2003. Blackcurrants are now grown commercially in the Northeastern United States and the Pacific Northwest. Because of the long period of restrictions, blackcurrants are not popular in the United States, and one researcher has estimated that only 0.1% of Americans have eaten one. [...] By 2003 restrictions on Ribes cultivation had been lifted across most of the states, though some bans remain, particularly on the blackcurrant. State laws are enforced with varying degrees of efficiency and enthusiasm; in some states, officials effectively ignore the ban."

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackcurrant_production_in_the...

IT was the French

Except we know the hertz will harm local timbre, even if some are okay the the currant's whine.

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[0] - Specifically at human/humane, live in and breathe in and admire it scale. I'm very fond of nature at population scale, and at molecular scale, both of which present interesting puzzles and applications.