5 ms·

He lists several. Actually, most of the article is listing these conditions. > It’s hot, cold, windy, the rain lashes at you, and the snow and sleet pelt you a

by Leszek 14y ago

He lists several. Actually, most of the article is listing these conditions. > It’s hot, cold, windy, the rain lashes at you, and the snow and sleet pelt you at high velocity. > Wind is perhaps the most formidable force trees face at that elevation. Ever seen trees on the top of a mountain? Their trunks bow away from the prevailing winds. > Next let’s add extreme heat and cold to the mix. [Long paragraph of explanation]. The surface of a leaf—especially in direct sunlight, as on the unshaded side of a skyscraper—can be many degrees hotter than the air, up to 14 degrees C in some species (nearly 26 degrees F).

VLM 14y ago
That's what made the article rather provincial and a fail, even though the basic point that "gardening is somewhat complicated" was OK. If you've never been out of your urban area, ever, perhaps a native New Yorker or something like that, you may not realize that trees can be found all over the world in some pretty crazy conditions. Not just trees, but even human beings, have been known to live in places that are 26 degrees warmer (or colder), although someone extremely unsophisticated may not be aware of it. Which made me interpret the article as a humor piece. What could be a problem is placing a skyscraper in an area already only borderline habitable, but why would you want to live there anyway? The treeline in colorado is around eleven or twelve thousand feet so given that Denver is about five thousand feet up, I would not put a tree covered skyscraper more than 5000 or so feet higher than Denver. Or if you're building in Denver and insist on putting a tree on top, don't make the building more than 6000 feet tall. Or if you're building a little hut at Mt Everest base camp, putting a tree on top of it might not work out so well. Another issue is the absolute tree line for all conifers might be 11000 feet but for say, palm trees, it might be lower.
- corresation 14y ago
  That's what made the article rather provincial and a fail You argue that you were unsure if the article was a humor piece, yet I find your comically haughty reply to be just as questionable, as are many other of the comments in here clearly by people who have never tried to grow anything in their lives. The armchair expert is as loud as ever. I live near an escarpment, along which you can find countless trees surviving (sometimes barely) along the rocky edge, desperately clinging to life in the most unsustaining of conditions. Yet in perfect soil / perfect sun / perfect hydration I've barely been able to grow two trees in my back yard (I'll find out shortly whether they survived the winter). You see in nature it gets countless tries with countless specimens to give it a go. For every one tree in harsh conditions you see surviving, uncountable others perished. The one that survived had the luck of being the perfect variation for the environment, lucking into the right conditions at the right times of its life, etc. Is that how you garden a skyscraper? Just give it several million years to work it out?
  - blocktuw 14y ago
    I don't seen how your experience with growing trees is any different than the original author's experience. Both of you may be professional arborists, yet you fail at growing trees. Therefore your conclusion is trees are hard to grow. Maybe you both are bad at growing trees.
    - corresation 14y ago
      The simple fact that "professional arborist" exists as a profession might be hint enough to you that saying "trees exist in nature, therefore you can have them anywhere you'd like" might be a poor bit of logic.
    - VLM 14y ago
      "Maybe you both are bad at growing trees" Trees are pretty easy to grow, and the posters might be good at growing trees. The problem is there are so many kinds of tree. More likely growing the wrong tree for the local climate and microclimate. Being able to buy a sapling from someone who profits from people having to buy saplings doesn't necessarily prove anything about either the sapling or the environment other than you can definitely make money selling saplings. If you go into the design process with a selected species before you design its environment, and then ignore its biological requirements in the environment design, its going to fail. Ignoring the environment while planting a tree anyway, is the opposite of being truly ecological or truly green. Looking a couple levels up at the guy with the two dead trees... just grow a different species, it'll take off like a weed unless you're in a desert or worse (grow a cactus?) The existence of professional arborists proves nothing. There's nothing wrong with trying to stretch both your own abilities and your local/micro climate abilities. An arborist is an expensive way to get someone who knows what they're doing to have your back when you get a little too ambitious. Growing two oak trees in front of my childhood home was a little overambitious once they got up to 100 feet or so, and an arborist (for quite a fee) trimmed the dead branches every couple years for my parents. If you insist and have way too much money, an arborist can probably find a way to grow a palm tree in Alaska or a conifer in Dubai. But you won't like the bill... Analogy: I want to grow and eat some edible plants. I like bananas (whats not to love?). I plant some bananas outside in Wisconsin. They die in January when it never goes above freezing for three weeks. Therefore no edible plants can or should be grown in Wisconsin, and no one else should even try, and growing edible plants in Wisconsin is just a wasteful fad that should go away. Or maybe not, since I know personally you can eat pretty well off fresh farmers market produce... however, no bananas.
- Leszek 14y ago
  I was replying specifically to the question in the comment asking: "What harsh conditions are there in the side of a building that don't exist in nature? ([...] it would be nice for him to specify)". Whether those specified conditions are actually too harsh or not is not for me to say, I don't grow trees and I don't analyse weather patterns on skyscrapers. Also, assuming you meant "you" as in me rather than "you" as in "one": I am quite far away from being a native New Yorker, and I don't appreciate the implication that I am "extremely unsophisticated".

by Leszek 14y ago

VLM 14y ago

That's what made the article rather provincial and a fail, even though the basic point that "gardening is somewhat complicated" was OK. If you've never been out of your urban area, ever, perhaps a native New Yorker or something like that, you may not realize that trees can be found all over the world in some pretty crazy conditions. Not just trees, but even human beings, have been known to live in places that are 26 degrees warmer (or colder), although someone extremely unsophisticated may not be aware of it. Which made me interpret the article as a humor piece. What could be a problem is placing a skyscraper in an area already only borderline habitable, but why would you want to live there anyway? The treeline in colorado is around eleven or twelve thousand feet so given that Denver is about five thousand feet up, I would not put a tree covered skyscraper more than 5000 or so feet higher than Denver. Or if you're building in Denver and insist on putting a tree on top, don't make the building more than 6000 feet tall. Or if you're building a little hut at Mt Everest base camp, putting a tree on top of it might not work out so well. Another issue is the absolute tree line for all conifers might be 11000 feet but for say, palm trees, it might be lower.

corresation 14y ago
That's what made the article rather provincial and a fail You argue that you were unsure if the article was a humor piece, yet I find your comically haughty reply to be just as questionable, as are many other of the comments in here clearly by people who have never tried to grow anything in their lives. The armchair expert is as loud as ever. I live near an escarpment, along which you can find countless trees surviving (sometimes barely) along the rocky edge, desperately clinging to life in the most unsustaining of conditions. Yet in perfect soil / perfect sun / perfect hydration I've barely been able to grow two trees in my back yard (I'll find out shortly whether they survived the winter). You see in nature it gets countless tries with countless specimens to give it a go. For every one tree in harsh conditions you see surviving, uncountable others perished. The one that survived had the luck of being the perfect variation for the environment, lucking into the right conditions at the right times of its life, etc. Is that how you garden a skyscraper? Just give it several million years to work it out?
- blocktuw 14y ago
  I don't seen how your experience with growing trees is any different than the original author's experience. Both of you may be professional arborists, yet you fail at growing trees. Therefore your conclusion is trees are hard to grow. Maybe you both are bad at growing trees.
  - corresation 14y ago
    The simple fact that "professional arborist" exists as a profession might be hint enough to you that saying "trees exist in nature, therefore you can have them anywhere you'd like" might be a poor bit of logic.
  - VLM 14y ago
    "Maybe you both are bad at growing trees" Trees are pretty easy to grow, and the posters might be good at growing trees. The problem is there are so many kinds of tree. More likely growing the wrong tree for the local climate and microclimate. Being able to buy a sapling from someone who profits from people having to buy saplings doesn't necessarily prove anything about either the sapling or the environment other than you can definitely make money selling saplings. If you go into the design process with a selected species before you design its environment, and then ignore its biological requirements in the environment design, its going to fail. Ignoring the environment while planting a tree anyway, is the opposite of being truly ecological or truly green. Looking a couple levels up at the guy with the two dead trees... just grow a different species, it'll take off like a weed unless you're in a desert or worse (grow a cactus?) The existence of professional arborists proves nothing. There's nothing wrong with trying to stretch both your own abilities and your local/micro climate abilities. An arborist is an expensive way to get someone who knows what they're doing to have your back when you get a little too ambitious. Growing two oak trees in front of my childhood home was a little overambitious once they got up to 100 feet or so, and an arborist (for quite a fee) trimmed the dead branches every couple years for my parents. If you insist and have way too much money, an arborist can probably find a way to grow a palm tree in Alaska or a conifer in Dubai. But you won't like the bill... Analogy: I want to grow and eat some edible plants. I like bananas (whats not to love?). I plant some bananas outside in Wisconsin. They die in January when it never goes above freezing for three weeks. Therefore no edible plants can or should be grown in Wisconsin, and no one else should even try, and growing edible plants in Wisconsin is just a wasteful fad that should go away. Or maybe not, since I know personally you can eat pretty well off fresh farmers market produce... however, no bananas.
Leszek 14y ago
I was replying specifically to the question in the comment asking: "What harsh conditions are there in the side of a building that don't exist in nature? ([...] it would be nice for him to specify)". Whether those specified conditions are actually too harsh or not is not for me to say, I don't grow trees and I don't analyse weather patterns on skyscrapers. Also, assuming you meant "you" as in me rather than "you" as in "one": I am quite far away from being a native New Yorker, and I don't appreciate the implication that I am "extremely unsophisticated".