Tall Tulip Trees on Millport Tagged for Removal

A pair of tulip trees that hover over power lines and homes on the one-way stretch of Millport Avenue are slated to come down, officials say.

According to Tree Warden Bruce Pauley, himself a resident of the jagging Millport segment that runs between Lakeview Avenue and Main Street, residents in condominiums located directly across from the towering trees are uncomfortable with them there.

“Tulip trees are relatively weak,” Pauley said on a recent afternoon, his 7-month-old German shepherd dog, Bheema, at the other end of a leash, gazing up at the trees that stand on either side of a driveway at 135 and 137 Millport Ave. “How these two have not caused damage to this point is a miracle.”

Connecticut Light & Power is scheduled to take down the trees and the town’s highway department will remove the logs cut from it, Pauley said.

Tulip trees—Latin name ‘Liriodendron tulipifera’ “which is extremely poetic,” the tree warden says—are fast-growing but not particularly strong.

“They have been affected by road salt more than anything else, which affects the roots’ ability to absorb,” Pauley said.

This isn’t the first time that Pauley has tagged trees on his own street. The top of one tree near the intersection at Lakeview—possibly a Norway maple—snapped off and came down on power lines during Irene, and another time, two ash trees leaning out over Millport Avenue had to come down, he said.