Decatur’s trees and what they drop
The Arbor Day Foundation has named Decatur a Tree City USA 16 times, starting in 2010. According to the city’s 2012 forest plan, trees covered about 45% of the city’s land in 2010.
The city’s 2012 street tree inventory found dogwoods, crapemyrtles and flowering cherries, willow and water oaks, red maples, Chinese elms and sweetgums most often. With that mix, gutters keep filling for much of the year: hardwoods let go of their leaves through fall and into early winter, and in spring the blossoms and seeds come down.
Then there are the pines. If a pine stands in or near Atlanta, odds are it’s a loblolly, the Atlanta History Center says, and the city’s forest plan counts loblolly pines among its street trees. Their needles grow 6 to 10 inches long in bundles of three, NC State Extension notes, and fall in the tree’s third year. Soaked by rain, needles and leaves pack into a dense mat that holds water back and tends to settle over the downspout opening.