Trees, Shrubs and Conifers: Unusual and odd-shaped trees, 1 by Penn_Pete

Penn_Pete wrote:
Here's my contribution. This was/is Robinia pseudoacacia, Black Locust. Like many of them, this one forked about chest height. About 10 years ago, it split, with one side landing on my rows of peppers in the garden. The other side was pretty wobbly too, so I cut that one down too where the other had broken. The next year I decided to burn the stump and set it afire. That night, it was still burning, so I doused it with the hose.

The next day at lunch, a neighbor called me and said that thing was going off like a Roman Candle, that i should get home. I beat the fire company by about 5 minutes, and we hosed it down right. That evening, I was stirring around in the ashes and the darned thing came back to life. This time I sat there 1/2 the night with a lawn sprinkler dousing the flames.

By the fall, there was some green at the top, and it has made a sort of tree from the one thin strip of bark that lived. I plan on taking it down, ever since a wind knocked on of those watersprouts onto the Northern Catalpa (the replacement tree) and broke the top out of my Catalpa.

Here is the base of the tree. One can see one of the 'clear-through' holes just above the level of the RR tracks in the background. The live bark of the new tree can be seen curling around too.