My friend Dr. Raimundo Quintal, distinguished dendrologist and Madeiran environmentalist, titled an article in the way that, with due respect, I also use it here in this text, because they are two words that explain much of what happens about the feat against trees of ornament, here in the lands of Faro.
Dendroclasty means "aversion to the tree" and dendrophobia means "fear or horror of the tree". And I remember having read in Alexandre Herculano that “southern men have a horror of trees” – but, after so many decades of civilizational progress and development of knowledge about Nature, and, of course, about trees, it was gone. time the procedures had changed.
There is an official video of the City Council of Faro in which an “agronomist” has a wealth of knowledge about “the rolling prunings that are necessary for the conservation of trees”.
This long dissertation is ignored, he says, supported by many specialists, that for decades scroll pruning, harness and other terms of this type have ceased to be part of the lexicon of ornamental trees.
They may be needed in fruit growing and I'm not talking about that, but agronomists and agricultural engineers (not just “agronomers”) who must know about fruit trees, if they want to know about ornamental trees and gardening, they have to study a bit more.
For example, the work “A Árvore”, by professors Caldeira Cabral and Gonçalo Ribeiro Telles, published in the sixties of the XNUMXth century, and which the illustrious agronomist and full professor Tomás Moreira classified as a kind of bible of gardening services.
The number 1 photograph that I present here is that of abortions or brooms in which the jacarandas of Estoi are systematically transformed and it is not clear why. They don't affect homes, nor do they bother anyone, and that abstruse idea that, when pruned with a broom, they give more flower, is complete bullshit.
So as not to make this text heavier, I don't publish the photograph, but I suggest that you go see two jacaranda trees at the entrance to Refúgio Aboim Ascensão, properly pruned (they only ask for a dry cleaning now) and see how they cover themselves with flower. Or look at the central avenue in Funchal's downtown, I've known those jacaranda trees for sixty years, they are full of flowers and have only taken the initial formation pruning with which they were planted.
Photos nº 2 and 3 are from the garden of Alameda, in Faro. Here the nonsense cries to heaven! So in a leafy garden, one of the few that exist in the city, a murder of trees of this size is carried out!?
If the authors of the act are waiting for me to come here to explain technical reasons and fundamentals for my position, they can wait, because it would be enough to ask the students of landscape architecture to say something about the subject. The Lisbon City Council has abandoned this practice for decades.
The only question remains: having in the City Hall of Faro so many landscape architects and some with extensive experience, why aren't they responsible for maintaining green spaces and ornamental trees?
Author Fernando Santos Pessoa is a forestry engineer and landscape architect…and writes with the spelling he learned at school
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