DOWNTOWN'S DISEASED TREES CUT, REPLACED

CAPE GIRARDEAU -- This spring a new look will unfold along the Cape Girardeau downtown riverfront.

Ever since the 1960s, crab apple trees have grown in the grassy strip east of Water Street between Themis and Independence. But those trees are now coming out to make way for new pear trees.

Weather permitting, the new trees are expected to be in place by the middle of next month. The trees are being replaced at the direction of the Main Street Levee District, a special tax district supported solely by property owners, said the president of the district's board of commissioners, Andy Juden.

Juden said the apple trees had developed disease and were dying out, so the commission decided to take them out and stick the pear trees in their place. Altogether, in excess of 30 trees will go in, he said.

The district's five commissioners, Juden said, decided at a March 19 meeting to have the new trees planted.

As with the apple tree, he said, the pear tree is a low-maintenance tree that won't encroach on the railroad tracks or the river floodwall immediately to the east.

"This tree has a tendency to stay tall and narrow," he said. "We were looking for something that did not grow too rapidly, stayed narrow, and, at the same time, offered some flora in the spring that was pleasing.

"They do not as such produce fruit; they're an ornamental tree really." The tree blooms with white flowers, he said.

Each apple tree will be replaced with a new tree 6 to 7 feet in height and about 1-inches in diameter, Juden said. In addition, three or four other apple trees that died over the last few years will also now be replaced.

The trees will be replaced in the same geometric pattern that was used with the apple trees, said Juden.

A Cape Girardeau nursery, Accu-Grow, is replacing the trees. Juden said work on taking out the apple trees began sometime last week.

Juden declined to guess how long the new trees would be around.

"I would certainly expect them to last as long or longer than the previous trees, but who knows what kind of exotic diseases and viruses will develop in the next 30 years."

The replacement of the trees is unrelated to the planned painting of a mural on the river side of the flood wall, he said.