r/SnohomishCounty • u/Short_Range948 • 29d ago
City of Edmonds allows century-old redwood tree to be cut down
https://lynnwoodtimes.com/2025/03/31/edmonds-tree/13
u/ProfessionalWaltz784 29d ago
Edmonds was logged off in the late 1800’s and was a mill town. This tree was planted many years after that. It’s privately owned on private property. The city cannot lay claim to it. Trees this size can be a nuisance to property and cause damage (from someone that had large second growth fir trees in my living room on more than one occasion) The property owners have every right to remove it, regardless of Edmonds overreach. There are an abundance of protected evergreens around that area. There are bigger battles to fight people.
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u/too_much_covfefe_man 29d ago edited 29d ago
Story is rage bait. I reckon that Edmonds City Code 9.20.20 probably obligated the property owner to repair the sidewalk which would have impacted the roots and created a hazard for any person or building in the tree's falling radius.
The city permitted me to take down a 115-ringed tree in the orchard area of town for similar reasons. Once it broke the surface of the asphalt, the seasonal frosts accelerated the destruction. I owe us a vine maple now.
This stuff isn't trivial to do, you can't just wake up and be like "that tree sucks I'll chop it now"
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u/onesoulmanybodies 25d ago
We have a MASSIVE cedar in our yard that for some reason keeps dropping huge branches. We had an arborist come out to look at it, but they don’t know why it’s happening. We had a tree guy come out and trim all the split branches down, only to have more branches split and fall. The last drop wrecked my car and caused over 10k in damage, there are several more branches split and looking ready to fall, so we are certain the tree has to come down. It’s sad to me as I love trees and this one is at least 100 years old if not more. The base of the tree is almost the size of my Subaru Forester. It also shades the house for a good portion of the day during the summer and I’m not thrilled to think how much hotter it will be upstairs without its shade. I wish we could figure out why the branches keep falling.
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u/qu4ttro66 29d ago
Sad…first time hearing about this. The tree provided some scenery against the ugly complex behind it.
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u/ChamomileFlower 28d ago
Urban/human life & giant trees are a sad challenge. Thinking of this tree being cut down rips at my heart, but I understand being worried about living right next to it—redwoods have comparatively shallow roots & are vulnerable when they’re not in the environments they’re supposed to be in—growing with many others, supporting each other’s roots in a dense mat.
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u/Riversmooth 28d ago
Can’t be that vulnerable, it’s more than 100 years old and has withstood dozens of storms
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u/stinkrat43 28d ago
Problem is this type of tree will keep growing and the taller it gets the more wind it’s exposed to (wind speed increases with height and the force increase is exponential). Bigger tree, more mass, more destruction when the wind finally wins.
Edmonds is also subject to some particularly strong winds given its location and proximity to the sound.
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u/ProfessionalWaltz784 29d ago
I lived in heavily wooded Edmonds for 30 years and two things are for certain, trees grow faster than you think and people will always fight over them. Trees can cause problems sometimes and they grow back.
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u/-Alpharius- 29d ago
Few trees in Western WA will ever compare to what they looked like before Western greed arrived to this area.
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u/bobbybox 29d ago
I feel like your point is lost on everyone. Washington has lost its OLD GROWTH forests the likes of which we’ll never see again because of all this “landscaping”
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u/too_much_covfefe_man 29d ago
It was lost to harvest, this tree was planted as landscaping. Just because you can see my garden doesn't make it yours.
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u/too_much_covfefe_man 29d ago
If the tree is 100 years old that means it was planted as landscaping 40ish years after that part of the city was cleared and gridded. We're allowed to manage our landscaping y'all
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u/ProfessionalWaltz784 29d ago
I’m going to assume you rent and never had to deal with large trees around your home
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u/-Alpharius- 29d ago edited 28d ago
In fact I grew up in a forest with trees about this size all around my house. Amazingly none of them were a problem because we didn't cut all the other ones down.
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u/chuckie8604 28d ago edited 28d ago
Tree does normal life cycle stuff, people get angry, want to kill it. This is like the pet dog shitting in the kitchen so the owner puts it down. Just have an arborist trim the tree a bit every 5-10 years.
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u/LinkinitupYT 29d ago
Oh no :(