My social distancing walks in Santa Rosa have been lovely—except for all the badly pruned trees. They’re ugly and the city is worse off because of them. Let me explain, with photos. (thread)

Is this a cactus? No, it’s just a mutilated tree. 2/

But the tree that was turned into a cactus got lucky. Three full-sized liquid ambers were hacked even worse last year. Here are two of them. 3/

Crape myrtles are frequent victims of bad pruning. The first one here is not so bad, but I’m not sure what someone was thinking with the second. That was one of several that had been “pruned” that way. 4/

According to @adrian_higgins of the @washingtonpost, this is called “crape murder.” In Santa Rosa, we’ve had a massacre. https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/home/dont-commit-a-crape-murder/2015/03/17/269d2508-c446-11e4-9ec2-b418f57a4a99_story.html 5/

Sometimes people “pollard” trees, like the one on the left, which makes them really ugly when they don’t have leaves. Even worse, some pollarded trees are allowed to regrow, and then they look like an old man with whiskers sprouting everywhere. 6/

Here in Santa Rosa, people butcher trees even when there aren’t powerlines or buildings nearby, like in a cemetery or on the edge of a park. 7/