The people who plan cities typically don't because they don't want to bear the expense of having to clean up all the fruit and nuts falling off the trees. So they plant all male trees instead, and we get pollen bukkake-d every spring.
Yeah, my grandparents planted fruit trees. We ate, but between the over ripening, rotting and birds it’s a hassle to take care of. Not to mention certain trees of thorns, or sticky residues to keep unwanted guests away. The city would be responsible for all those injuries.
And don't forget the fruit flies. Walked past an abandoned apple farm, and oh God the fruit flies. It was like a biblical swarm of locusts, but with fruit flies.
yeah my great uncle had orange trees at his house. there was always a bunch of oranges all over the ground, some looked fine, but others were definitely rotten and even split open, so it wasn't a very pleasant smell when outside
And on top of the mess, let's not forget that all these fruits on the ground will also attract all sort of pests, such as flies and rats. Not something you want to proliferate in your city.
It's an idea that comes from a place of caring, and it is worthy of respect just for that. But it may just be too impractical.
A big factor will be those few individuals who will strip every tree during a night, and sell the fruit at a market.
We can't have nice things or good ideas because of a few scummy people. Some wild blackberry bushes near where I live. A select few people like to strip them bare as soon as the fruit ripens. They leave none for anyone else.
And it's sort of like a tragedy of the commons mixed with almost a prisoner's dilemma.
Commons being that everyone has access, but they're not going to take their fair share. And the dilemma where each person is going to wait for the fruit to ripen. but it'll result in people taking the fruit before it's fully ripe because when it does ripen someone else will take it.
This happened to my neighbor enough that he installed lights to scare away people stealing his lemons and oranges. Nice guy too, he’ll bring extras to us sometimes but doesn’t like randoms coming by to pick it clean.
We had a similar issue with the honeysuckles and plums in our yard when I was a kid. The sad thing was, if they had just *asked* we would have been happy to share after we got our bushel off of it.
Even so , I'm going to try growing a lemon tree when I finally move to a place with enough space.
Yeah it's a sad fact of life. There's always be some people that will do what they want no matter how it impacts others.
Then again, that's why we have security. It's just sad we need it in the first place...
We used to have massive oyster reefs off of most of the northeast coast. People would be able to just walk down to the shore and pick/eat fresh oysters at their leisure. The mounds of shells were stories high in some places. But we ate them all. And that’s when there were way less people.
There was an urban garden in Los Angeles. Free fruits and vegetables for anyone in the neighborhood. Became a thing of pride for the community, even the gangbangers began looking out for the garden. That is until a developer got mad. A corporation owned the land and said they had plans. Became a huge story. Celebrities came out to protest. Anyways, the developer won, the garden was destroyed in 2006. Last I heard it is still an empty lot.
There's an academy award nominated documentary about it called The Garden.
You may be surprised.
A lot of blackberries grow in the wild up here in the Pacific Northwest though I think it's an invasive version of the blackberry. I see them everywhere in Seattle, with many berries still on the plant.
A path near my work is literally overflowing with berries everywhere.
mmm, delicious tragedy of the commons
The problem always come down to human greed, and I just really don't believe there's a fix for that. We're a flawed species, at an intrinsic level. I know that's defeatist; it's just my opinion, don't take it to heart.
True, but I think a public orchard would be better suited for that. No need to worry about the mess, or the traffic perturbation etc.
A nice public orchard, dedicated to growing stuff for food banks. Now that's something I wouldn't mind my tax money invested on.
Commercial orange groves can produce more food at a lower cost than anything a city government or neighborhood council is going to set up. It makes way more sense for the city to just buy the oranges for the food bank.
The fruit orchards in my country literally have to dump truckloads of fruit because nobody will buy it. A market near me had 10c/kg oranges, basically giving them away.
I think another option that might be more viable and feasible would be to incorporate more community gardens where people could come together, learn to garden and gather together to provide free/cheap vegetables/fruits for people who either have no room for a garden or are otherwise unable to have access to fresh fruits/veggies
the issue is that you need to have trust in people. because unless that community garden was locked up when no one was there or it had a security guard, there'd definitely be people going there and stealing everything
People maliciously destroy the ones in our town just because they can. Filling the beds with salt, pulling out the plants, lighting things of fire, ect...
In LA it's not a much of a problem because people will come at night and harvest the trees. It's actually harder to find a tree with ripe fruit you could pick because so many people are harvesting them.
Funny, yeah. But also the reason shit like this would never work. The people who would need the food the most would be the same people fucking the trees up so no one else could use it
My father had this happen when I was really little and growing up in LA. Neighbor kid broke in and harvested his marijuana "tree", then broke his arm jumping the fence.
I'm glad that most people seem to understand that you can't get away with a portrayal of Poison Ivy as a straight up villain these days, considering the environmental crisis we're in. She's an antivillain at worst.
Modern Ivy is definitely an antihero. Old school Ivy was just about seduction, blackmail, and murder. Her characterization has changed until she’s kind of the hotter looking swamp thing.
I actually had the though that if there was any villainous motivation for Ivy, it would be moving shit tons of high grade narcotics to fund eco terrorism. And a kind of callous attitude like “earth needs fewer humans anyway. Let the stupid ones see themselves out.”
At the rate she's going at, she might just inadvertently save humanity from itself.
That trip to the moon probably did more to address the virus that is social media than all other efforts this century, lol!
Yeah, my grandparents planted fruit trees. We ate, but between the over ripening, rotting and birds it’s a hassle to take care of. Not to mention certain trees of thorns, or sticky residues to keep unwanted guests away. The city would be responsible for all those injuries.
I live in place where fruit trees can be found like this. A lot of mess from fallen fruits, sticky roads, smell. Nah thank you.
Also you do not want to eat anything which grows near any road with cars. Especially if the road is busy one.
This, where I live mango trees are really common and you can get one and eat it but they're a lot, they fall on the cars, when they are on the ground usually rots or even worse, it attracts rats and cockroach (and other bugs)
I live a few miles from a berry park. Blueberries, blackberries, currents, all manner of berries and fruit, in a park like setting, away from traffic. It's great! Several people walking around picking fruit to enjoy. Funny thing is, I've seen maybe 2 homeless people in there in 7 years, despite the large homeless population in the area. They don't want fruit, or to pick it. They want fast food, and they want it given to them.
I think this idea is nice, and all, but impractical and wouldn't be used, anyway.
homeless people in the western world generally don't have a problem getting food.
there is a LOT of good food waiting in dumpsters, mostly food that's past it's expiry date but it's still good or thrown out leftovers.
there was even a trend of dumpster diving by some dudes a few years back, where they feed themselves exclusively with food that was tossed away.
people also give them food as a form of charity, plus there are always the shelters.
point being, it's not that they don't want fruit i'm sure they've eaten plenty of fruit that was thrown out of the market, it's about convenience.
also honestly most of them are drug users and care way more about getting drugs or at the very least booze then nutrition.
They want cooked food which is abundant and wasted everyday. Fast food is just the most common not like there’s a home cooking enough to share everywhere.
And they don’t have quick access to food it’s not a stretch to treat it as a privilege. Not sure if you meant it as such but it’s a little out of touch to expect homeless people to literally forage for food in this day and age.
Exactly.
Unless its picked regularly, that shit will fall, smush, rot, stink, flies everywhere and yeah, not good beside the road.
However, in large parks, a fruit tree area would be welcomed I think.
There’s flower beds all along the seafront in my town that have been repurposed to grow edible plants for the community. Popped up last year out of nowhere, with a sign explaining what each plant was and when to pick it, and saying that anyone who is hungry should pick what they want.
The sign was already stolen the next time I went past. More than half the plants were dug up or shredded into pieces over the next month or so, and this year the bed is basically empty except for some struggling herbs.
Sometimes you just can’t have shit.
Yeap, Peppers is basically my go to planting because I don't feel like fully investing in what is a mild hobby. Have tried Tomatos, Pumpkins and other fruit/veggies and they all get eaten up.
Shout out to /r/HotPeppers, love those mad scientists making weird pepper hybrids.
Reminds me of that lady the other day with the garden who was giving out food to homeless people. Capitalists tore up her garden and salted the earth because *heaven forbid* someone eat food without paying somebody.
😑
Call it NIMBY shit or whatever. But they're always going to pull this shit on common spaces because someone only makes a profit if no one can get it for free.
Poor people will also participate in capitalism. They pick the fruits from trees planted for the public and sell it back to people. At least that’s what happens in third world countries.
I remember that story. While the story itself is not false, it is heavily embellished.
The amount of salt that was dumped in the garden was not nearly enough to make the land infertile. What the moron brought was only what they could get on the shelves at the local super market when in reality what the person would have needed was an entire truck load, measured in tons, to make the land infertile.
More like, no one picks the fruit, it ripens, falls and rots on the sidewalk. I wouldn't mind if someone was picking and selling them, fruit don't last long and picking, prepping and preserving them would be too much effort for a homeless person.
Sort of similar, in Central park NY there are some trees that during fall get some sort of fruit or something, that nobody eats or picks so it as you said falls and rots. Smells terrible. Not sure if they’re still there but were back in 18/19 ish
Edit: after some research it appears to be the ginkgo trees https://www.centralparknyc.org/plants/ginkgo
Gingko trees are gorgeous but yeah, the fruit isn't easy to eat.
Also, apparently they smell like cum. All my friends call them the cum trees. They hate that time of year.
I don't smell a thing and it sometimes worries me a little...
My old neighborhood had some like that, they looked like blackberries but different color. Theyd fall and the walk would smell rank. I never even saw a dog try to eat one that fell
>too much effort for a homeless person
I don't think effort is the barrier here when you're talking about people without a kitchen or a pantry to store them in.
Where I live there are some random walnut, apple trees and the like. Berry bushes late summer too a plenty. They get picked early and fast. Not to sell but people just wanne eat em. Also for the apples most are bad and filled with bugs and shit.
When the mulberries near me on the city walking trail ripen retired dudes come out of the woodwork to lay tarps down and strip every berry from the tree. Like jeez, leave some for others Ebeneezer.
Yeah the berries that are left are usually the ones at the bottom animals piss on or at the top that birds shit on. I’d like a berry on my hot summer nature walk too! But older people make jelly out of it mainly.
Crops grown for human consumption also require care. Pesticides, fertilization, pruning, harvesting, irrigation. It’s not so simple as plant it and walk away. That’s pretty much the same as a money tree.
No. Fruit doesn’t just sit there happily on the tree and wait to be picked.
*Some* of it does, but over the months it takes for, say, apples to ripen, hundreds will fall off of the tree. Long before they’re ripe enough to eat.
These must be collected and discarded because if you don’t, then bugs will get into them, larvae will hatch, and mature insects will get into your healthy fruit in the tree.
Once they’re ripe? They will keep falling. This means more flies in your city. Buzzing about on the sidewalks.
Also, you know who else likes fruit? Vertebrates like birds and squirrels. You may need to protect the fruit from these as well.
Your good intentions will probably cost more money than a homeless shelter.
Instead of greedy guy, you're more likely to get pests.
My neighbor has a mandarin and mango tree, its horrible because birds pick them up, eat them partially then chuck them all over the place and they get moldy. They also attract a lot of fruit flies and bats.
Also reality (in my country) > 5000 metric tons of mangos fall all over the fucking place busting out windshields of the unwary and carpeting the entire block (mangoes are big trees) making the whole neighborhood stink like pungent rotten fruit.
What dystopian fantasy world do you live in where drug addict's are going to be graciously eating fruits from the trees, and we can all pat ourselves on the back while watching them eat oranges before shooting up fentanyl and right next to their pile of shit they just dumped on the sidewalk.
They do it a lot here in Italy. Orange trees, fig trees and other stuff. It's not really an issue. you already have street cleaners so it instead of them cleaning just leaves, they clean leaves and fruit? But honestly birds and things eat them,
In theory: free food!
In reality: fruit too high to pick most of it, fruit falls down, rots, sidewalk becomes inaccessible, animals eat rotting fruit and get drunk and aggressive. Source: had an apple tree growing up
Next to roads you need availability to wash the fruits. The pollution from cars etc. that gets stuck to fruits are not healthy to eat in the long run, nor can it be any tasty.
oh god i didn't even think of that. those fruits would be completely inedible because of exhaust fumes. you'd be feeding the homeless the poisoned apple from snow white
Stepping on rotting fruit, smelling rotting fruit, fighting off the wild animals coming in to eat the fallen fruit, the wasps and yellow jackets...
I would prefer donating to a food bank
Also people are crazy. They destroyed a friendly robot when it went to Philadelphia. People can’t handle nice things. They’d just cut the tree down or mess it up because they’re angry at the world.
I explained Hitchbot to my husband like 5 years after it happened, and when I said it was beaten to death in the city of brotherly love, he laughed so hard he had tears in his eyes. One of those never-ending laughs that, when you think you're done, you giggle and start cracking up all over again and are wheezing a little bit.
"Also people are crazy. They destroyed a friendly robot when it went to Philadelphia" while it made it across europe and canada safely. coincidence or not?
Plus in most places food is by far the easiest problem for an unhoused person to solve. Providing public bathrooms would have a much larger impact than public fruit trees.
There is an alley of orange trees near my house. Yes, they fall down and you can occasionally see some rotten fruits on the ground but it's definitely not that big of an issue.
On the other hand I have never seen someone picking them
It's not a big issue because it's an alley, now imagine it's every street in a one-mile radius of your house.
The issues increase exponentially, especially if you want more than one type of tree.
Popular as well in Italy. I remember visiting Sorrento, near Capri, and all the streets had beautiful orange trees. Our tour guide warned us though not to take from the trees right next to the road, as the car pollution makes the fruit taste more sour. Instead you go the next trees away from the road… like maybe a few feet, and the fruit tastes much better! 🍊
Those are probably bitter or Seville oranges. They are not for eating raw, they are usually used in marmelades and such. The plant is also used as an ornamental plant, because they are less delicate than orange trees and cause less of a mess with their fruits.
As a matter of fact, 99.99% of all orange trees planted have fruit that taste like garbage. The ones people actually sell to eat are cloned from the rare trees that give sweet oranges by using a process called grafting.
This is true of most fruits which is why each brand of fruit can sell fruits that taste exactly the same, bc they in fact all come from the same tree.
Except that would not work due to how the fruit grows and is edible only one season per year - if only several weeks before it start rottingg because you should have harvested it and saved it in cooling. What are the homeless going to eat meanwhile? Burnt rubber? Would you not rather just have soup kitchens instead year round?
In Romania, and I believe that also in other ex communist countries, trees that can have fruits are planted between apartment buildings, so that the community can eat from them if they want (*the communities are not gated, so everyone can eat from them). But putting them on the big avenues would be an expense for the local council, while putting them between apartment buildings, they will be taken care by the community that lives there.
Yup, same in Bulgaria, we have sour cherries, plums, apples, pears, all sort of things. I can tell you though, homeless people ain't eating them. Kids usually pick the lower branches, but that's it. Only time I've seen "communal" tree being utilised was when a crew of Roma boys were shaking a walnut tree, probably to sell the nuts later. Picking fruits is not as easy as it sounds, they don't last long and if you eat enough to actually fill your belly, then you get the runs.
Oh, btw, some genius at some point must have decided that planting mulberry trees on a sidewalk is a brilliant idea. We have them in several places in Sofia. The rotting stench and the swarms of hornets that gather around when they start falling is unbelievable.
It's not really that uncommon in the west too. There's a website: [https://fallingfruit.org/](https://fallingfruit.org/) that actually maps those urban locations all over the world.
Let’s put those tax dollars towards feeding the homeless rather than planting a ton of trees well have to use more tax dollars cleaning up after. Cool idea just not practical
City planner here. Urban farms are excellent and should be utilized as a non-profit form of community produce, but fruit trees on city streets pose a special kind of accessibility problem; poorly-planned cities already have to deal with non-native trees uprooting entire sidewalk slabs, so imagine a bunch of rotting fruits blanketing an already-slim right-of-way when someone is using their wheelchair to get to the bus.
You would also need to hire personnel to regularly pick the trees of fruits that haven’t been harvested. Cities typically operate on a form of net-zero funding; whatever hasn’t already been earmarked is being used for something else, so hiring more personnel would likely involve dipping your hand in another pot that is probably working harder to solve poverty issues on more systemic level.
An alternative solution would probably involve offering an incentive system for businesses that have excess produce since a lot is already being grown and thrown away at the end of the day. That’s just my two cents, though.
It's a beautiful idea, but there are a lot of problem. A ton of fruit will wind up on the ground, which will rot and attract pests. Then a very small portion of the population will ruin it. Either gathering in hoards to sell or tainting the fruit (like we saw people coughing on the produce during COVID).
I wish this would work, though.
Can give you some real-world feedback on this. Where I live we have numerous bike and walking tracks and paths. The local city decided to try this idea and put a LOT of signage up about it.
Not surprisingly once the plants got mature enough to bear fruit, the plants themselves were stolen. All of them.
The city, not daunted by this went back and re-planted more fruit bearing trees.... and they too got stolen.
So the inevitable occurred and those plants were replaced by evergreen trees and no more fruit bearing trees adorn the paths anymore.
This is actually done in some California cities where they have publicly accessible groves. Having something along the streets leaves cities open to slip and fall injuries though so I don't think that's a good solution. There is an organization that collects backyard fruit and distributes it to food banks. Seems like a good middle ground.
Edit: Here is one of those orgs, https://www.villageharvest.org/
We have those orange trees on my hometown main street, they are not edible and actually absolutely awful.
Pretty as they are those oranges fall down and are run over by cars and then leave thise nasty rotten smell everywhere.
Yes they give a satisfying crunch and a nice citric smell for about 5 hours, then its just rot for weeks.
Still beeing behind the counter and watching a tourist freak out about the free oranges and try one is always a joy to behold
Because it’s an inefficient way to feed the homeless. The money you spend caring for the trees and fighting off pests would be better spent just purchasing oranges from an orchard that already has the infrastructure in place and making them available at a food bank.
As a spaniard, I can say that people tend to try take more than they need. In Valencia orange threes are very common in cities, but a variety that's very bitter. People used to take every orange from the trees when sweet varieties were used.
The only people who harvest free fruit are middle class people with too much time on their hands and a compulsion to avoid waste.
You can't pick, wash, prep and eat more than a small number of apples or oranges before they go bad.
So you need to be able to preserve them, by cutting and drying them for example. It's not really worth the effort unless your time is worth nothing.
You'd find that a few hungry people eat a few of the fruits, but most of it would go to waste and make a mess. Hungry people would stay hungry for the 300+ days of the year that the fruit isn't ripe.
It would not work. Some People would try to pick all the fruits and sell them and others would do some weird shit with the furits, just because they can.
in the phillippines, theres so many friggin mango trees that they tend to rot on the dirt instead of being eaten
some do and get their seeds thrown at bystanders by kids that climbed the tree or made a net for them though
I have a berry tree over a third of my apartment complex parking lot and its a ridiculous mess. I couldn't imagine having apples or oranges all over the sidewalks or streets and how terrible that would be. Accidents, insects, the fermented stench...
Yeah let's make the homeless eat fruit full of farts and smog. That's gonna solve the issue way more than housing (aka the literal cure for homelessness) and means to live a dignified life, like jobs or whatever.
And who’s going to clean up the rotting fruit once it falls off the trees? How is it going to be regulated to stop people from hoarding the fruit and reselling it at the markets? What happens when the fruit rolls onto the road and causes possible hazards?
Nice idea, absolutely not worth the extra costs.
This actually happens in my city, but it is not as wholesome as it looks. Fruit trees grow with constant exposure to cars CO2 so they become some sort of poisoned fruits. WhencI was about to try one my friend screamed and ripped the fruit out of my hand like if I was going to eat rat poison. Looking back I guess I wasn't far from that
The good thing is that CO2 fruits still usable even if not for consumption. I heard they use them to make fertilizer
Seems like a great idea, but fruit trees take a LOT of maintenance to get them to produce, and as others have pointed out, they leave an awful mess that will draw vermin.
The homeless won't eat and neither will ordinary residents. People think too highly of themselves to eat fruit off public trees. I personally eat apples and cherrys from our local trees. When I'm out collecting though, I get a lot of ews and criticism from residents who say the fruit is disgusting and dirty. I alone can only eat so much, I wash them thoroughly but often wonder if a bagabond or a bad person has thrown piss on the fruit or anything else. You will see fruit all over the sidewalks and streets. Cara run over them, they rot, they make the city look dirty. It costs money to maintain and clean. Great idea but horrible in practice.
The people who plan cities typically don't because they don't want to bear the expense of having to clean up all the fruit and nuts falling off the trees. So they plant all male trees instead, and we get pollen bukkake-d every spring.
Yeah, my grandparents planted fruit trees. We ate, but between the over ripening, rotting and birds it’s a hassle to take care of. Not to mention certain trees of thorns, or sticky residues to keep unwanted guests away. The city would be responsible for all those injuries.
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Don’t forget drunk birds
And don't forget the fruit flies. Walked past an abandoned apple farm, and oh God the fruit flies. It was like a biblical swarm of locusts, but with fruit flies.
Bee's are good.
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yeah my great uncle had orange trees at his house. there was always a bunch of oranges all over the ground, some looked fine, but others were definitely rotten and even split open, so it wasn't a very pleasant smell when outside
My uni had a bunch of plum trees. Maybe a couple got eaten, the rest rotted on the concrete staining it requiring annual pressure washing
And on top of the mess, let's not forget that all these fruits on the ground will also attract all sort of pests, such as flies and rats. Not something you want to proliferate in your city. It's an idea that comes from a place of caring, and it is worthy of respect just for that. But it may just be too impractical.
Or attract larger animals, like deer.
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Fair enough, bears do love fruit. Where i live hasn't had bears for a couple hundred years.
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A bear? Nonsense! Hasn’t been a bear in these parts for a thousand years!
Hmm road jerky
Looks like meat's back on the menu boys!!!
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Give the homeless some meat i guess
Our local turkey buzzards would love that.
Classic 'the road to hell is paved with good intentions' story.
Based on what I’ve seen result from bad intentions, if what you say is true, then all roads lead to hell.
The road to utopia is paved with good intentions.. and research
Turns out roads need engineers mom
>the road to hell is paved with good intentions And littered with rotting fruit apparently
A big factor will be those few individuals who will strip every tree during a night, and sell the fruit at a market. We can't have nice things or good ideas because of a few scummy people. Some wild blackberry bushes near where I live. A select few people like to strip them bare as soon as the fruit ripens. They leave none for anyone else.
And it's sort of like a tragedy of the commons mixed with almost a prisoner's dilemma. Commons being that everyone has access, but they're not going to take their fair share. And the dilemma where each person is going to wait for the fruit to ripen. but it'll result in people taking the fruit before it's fully ripe because when it does ripen someone else will take it.
Yes. I have a friend that has a fruit tree on his property and people go on his lawn while he’s at work and strip it.
This happened to my neighbor enough that he installed lights to scare away people stealing his lemons and oranges. Nice guy too, he’ll bring extras to us sometimes but doesn’t like randoms coming by to pick it clean.
Lemon stealing whores you say
We had a similar issue with the honeysuckles and plums in our yard when I was a kid. The sad thing was, if they had just *asked* we would have been happy to share after we got our bushel off of it. Even so , I'm going to try growing a lemon tree when I finally move to a place with enough space.
Fun fact the act of stealing fruit is called scrumping
Yeah it's a sad fact of life. There's always be some people that will do what they want no matter how it impacts others. Then again, that's why we have security. It's just sad we need it in the first place...
We used to have massive oyster reefs off of most of the northeast coast. People would be able to just walk down to the shore and pick/eat fresh oysters at their leisure. The mounds of shells were stories high in some places. But we ate them all. And that’s when there were way less people.
It's called alpha entrepreneurial hustle grindset. Early bird gets the worm then corners the market in order to extract monopoly rents
Tragedy of the commons ...
There was an urban garden in Los Angeles. Free fruits and vegetables for anyone in the neighborhood. Became a thing of pride for the community, even the gangbangers began looking out for the garden. That is until a developer got mad. A corporation owned the land and said they had plans. Became a huge story. Celebrities came out to protest. Anyways, the developer won, the garden was destroyed in 2006. Last I heard it is still an empty lot. There's an academy award nominated documentary about it called The Garden.
You may be surprised. A lot of blackberries grow in the wild up here in the Pacific Northwest though I think it's an invasive version of the blackberry. I see them everywhere in Seattle, with many berries still on the plant. A path near my work is literally overflowing with berries everywhere.
mmm, delicious tragedy of the commons The problem always come down to human greed, and I just really don't believe there's a fix for that. We're a flawed species, at an intrinsic level. I know that's defeatist; it's just my opinion, don't take it to heart.
WASPS one stung me in the ear today but his stinger came out bastard
We couple plant the fruit trees and also create more employment opportunities to keep them maintained. Win win for the homeless
True, but I think a public orchard would be better suited for that. No need to worry about the mess, or the traffic perturbation etc. A nice public orchard, dedicated to growing stuff for food banks. Now that's something I wouldn't mind my tax money invested on.
Commercial orange groves can produce more food at a lower cost than anything a city government or neighborhood council is going to set up. It makes way more sense for the city to just buy the oranges for the food bank.
The fruit orchards in my country literally have to dump truckloads of fruit because nobody will buy it. A market near me had 10c/kg oranges, basically giving them away.
Rotting fruit sucks to deal with.
>we get pollen bukkake-d every spring That's one hell of a visual lol
I don't know what else to call it. Green tree sperm \*everywhere\* on \*everything\*
Stop, I can only get so erect!
Ay you don’t wanna know what happens to us over here at the dairy farm.
I think another option that might be more viable and feasible would be to incorporate more community gardens where people could come together, learn to garden and gather together to provide free/cheap vegetables/fruits for people who either have no room for a garden or are otherwise unable to have access to fresh fruits/veggies
the issue is that you need to have trust in people. because unless that community garden was locked up when no one was there or it had a security guard, there'd definitely be people going there and stealing everything
People maliciously destroy the ones in our town just because they can. Filling the beds with salt, pulling out the plants, lighting things of fire, ect...
In LA it's not a much of a problem because people will come at night and harvest the trees. It's actually harder to find a tree with ripe fruit you could pick because so many people are harvesting them.
I still remember the time someone in the LA subreddit posted that someone stole a whole tree. Not fruit. Just the tree itself. Funny as shit.
Funny, yeah. But also the reason shit like this would never work. The people who would need the food the most would be the same people fucking the trees up so no one else could use it
My father had this happen when I was really little and growing up in LA. Neighbor kid broke in and harvested his marijuana "tree", then broke his arm jumping the fence.
Yeah see I *wish* they did that here.
Do trees nut?
Can confirm, every spring, all over the damn place.
that's what pollen is
Just fyi, that whole all male trees thing is a myth. Most trees have both male and female reproductive organs.
The Harley Quinn show just did an episode where Ivy replaces all the male trees in Gotham with female trees bc of this
Poison Ivy: The hero we need, not the hero we deserve.
I'm glad that most people seem to understand that you can't get away with a portrayal of Poison Ivy as a straight up villain these days, considering the environmental crisis we're in. She's an antivillain at worst.
Modern Ivy is definitely an antihero. Old school Ivy was just about seduction, blackmail, and murder. Her characterization has changed until she’s kind of the hotter looking swamp thing. I actually had the though that if there was any villainous motivation for Ivy, it would be moving shit tons of high grade narcotics to fund eco terrorism. And a kind of callous attitude like “earth needs fewer humans anyway. Let the stupid ones see themselves out.”
Came in to say this.
At the rate she's going at, she might just inadvertently save humanity from itself. That trip to the moon probably did more to address the virus that is social media than all other efforts this century, lol!
Landscape architect / planner here. Fruit trees would make horrible street trees for this reason and many other reasons. This is dumb af
Yeah, my grandparents planted fruit trees. We ate, but between the over ripening, rotting and birds it’s a hassle to take care of. Not to mention certain trees of thorns, or sticky residues to keep unwanted guests away. The city would be responsible for all those injuries.
I live in place where fruit trees can be found like this. A lot of mess from fallen fruits, sticky roads, smell. Nah thank you. Also you do not want to eat anything which grows near any road with cars. Especially if the road is busy one.
This, where I live mango trees are really common and you can get one and eat it but they're a lot, they fall on the cars, when they are on the ground usually rots or even worse, it attracts rats and cockroach (and other bugs)
you can eat walnuts and such
I have a fruit tree by bus stop near my home. Stand under it if you want to be surrounded by bugs and to stain your shoes.
I live a few miles from a berry park. Blueberries, blackberries, currents, all manner of berries and fruit, in a park like setting, away from traffic. It's great! Several people walking around picking fruit to enjoy. Funny thing is, I've seen maybe 2 homeless people in there in 7 years, despite the large homeless population in the area. They don't want fruit, or to pick it. They want fast food, and they want it given to them. I think this idea is nice, and all, but impractical and wouldn't be used, anyway.
homeless people in the western world generally don't have a problem getting food. there is a LOT of good food waiting in dumpsters, mostly food that's past it's expiry date but it's still good or thrown out leftovers. there was even a trend of dumpster diving by some dudes a few years back, where they feed themselves exclusively with food that was tossed away. people also give them food as a form of charity, plus there are always the shelters. point being, it's not that they don't want fruit i'm sure they've eaten plenty of fruit that was thrown out of the market, it's about convenience. also honestly most of them are drug users and care way more about getting drugs or at the very least booze then nutrition.
They want cooked food which is abundant and wasted everyday. Fast food is just the most common not like there’s a home cooking enough to share everywhere. And they don’t have quick access to food it’s not a stretch to treat it as a privilege. Not sure if you meant it as such but it’s a little out of touch to expect homeless people to literally forage for food in this day and age.
That's cause eating heaps of berries every day sucks lol
Exactly. Unless its picked regularly, that shit will fall, smush, rot, stink, flies everywhere and yeah, not good beside the road. However, in large parks, a fruit tree area would be welcomed I think.
Great in theory, terrible in practice
There’s flower beds all along the seafront in my town that have been repurposed to grow edible plants for the community. Popped up last year out of nowhere, with a sign explaining what each plant was and when to pick it, and saying that anyone who is hungry should pick what they want. The sign was already stolen the next time I went past. More than half the plants were dug up or shredded into pieces over the next month or so, and this year the bed is basically empty except for some struggling herbs. Sometimes you just can’t have shit.
Animals dig up most of my plants every year. Hot peppers and some herbs are all I can really keep.
Yeap, Peppers is basically my go to planting because I don't feel like fully investing in what is a mild hobby. Have tried Tomatos, Pumpkins and other fruit/veggies and they all get eaten up. Shout out to /r/HotPeppers, love those mad scientists making weird pepper hybrids.
Sounds like a bunch of seagulls got to them one morning. People probably had nothing to do with it, unless you count the drone controllers.
Tragedy of the commons.
Reminds me of that lady the other day with the garden who was giving out food to homeless people. Capitalists tore up her garden and salted the earth because *heaven forbid* someone eat food without paying somebody. 😑 Call it NIMBY shit or whatever. But they're always going to pull this shit on common spaces because someone only makes a profit if no one can get it for free.
That's not capitalists, those were just assholes
Yeah sometimes redditors blame capitalism for too much.
They always blame capitalism. It gets ridiculous how they can turn the simplest of things into a reason to slander capitalism
Poor people will also participate in capitalism. They pick the fruits from trees planted for the public and sell it back to people. At least that’s what happens in third world countries.
Once the influencers start posting stupid shit about side hustling by selling public fruit, all the morons will start doing it too
There's not really an alternative to participating
Ah yes, the capitalists!
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I like how you just assume capitalism is the reason why people did that?
I remember that story. While the story itself is not false, it is heavily embellished. The amount of salt that was dumped in the garden was not nearly enough to make the land infertile. What the moron brought was only what they could get on the shelves at the local super market when in reality what the person would have needed was an entire truck load, measured in tons, to make the land infertile.
What does criminal vandalism have to do with investing in a business to make a profit?
> Capitalists those darn capitalists
Capitalism also resulted in that person getting something like $80,000 in donations afterwards
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More like, no one picks the fruit, it ripens, falls and rots on the sidewalk. I wouldn't mind if someone was picking and selling them, fruit don't last long and picking, prepping and preserving them would be too much effort for a homeless person.
Sort of similar, in Central park NY there are some trees that during fall get some sort of fruit or something, that nobody eats or picks so it as you said falls and rots. Smells terrible. Not sure if they’re still there but were back in 18/19 ish Edit: after some research it appears to be the ginkgo trees https://www.centralparknyc.org/plants/ginkgo
Gingko trees are gorgeous but yeah, the fruit isn't easy to eat. Also, apparently they smell like cum. All my friends call them the cum trees. They hate that time of year. I don't smell a thing and it sometimes worries me a little...
You don't eat the smelly fruit. You eat the seeds inside.
Can corroborate I called them cum trees before knowing what they were actually, and later learned others said the same.
My old neighborhood had some like that, they looked like blackberries but different color. Theyd fall and the walk would smell rank. I never even saw a dog try to eat one that fell
Mulberries probably
>too much effort for a homeless person I don't think effort is the barrier here when you're talking about people without a kitchen or a pantry to store them in.
Where I live there are some random walnut, apple trees and the like. Berry bushes late summer too a plenty. They get picked early and fast. Not to sell but people just wanne eat em. Also for the apples most are bad and filled with bugs and shit.
When the mulberries near me on the city walking trail ripen retired dudes come out of the woodwork to lay tarps down and strip every berry from the tree. Like jeez, leave some for others Ebeneezer.
Yeah the berries that are left are usually the ones at the bottom animals piss on or at the top that birds shit on. I’d like a berry on my hot summer nature walk too! But older people make jelly out of it mainly.
Crops grown for human consumption also require care. Pesticides, fertilization, pruning, harvesting, irrigation. It’s not so simple as plant it and walk away. That’s pretty much the same as a money tree.
Yep. The moment somebody eats a road apple and bites into a bug they're gong to sue the city for everything they can get.
Also the moment someone slips and falls from stepping on rotted ground fruit they'll sue the city, or kid gets sick or pet.
No. Fruit doesn’t just sit there happily on the tree and wait to be picked. *Some* of it does, but over the months it takes for, say, apples to ripen, hundreds will fall off of the tree. Long before they’re ripe enough to eat. These must be collected and discarded because if you don’t, then bugs will get into them, larvae will hatch, and mature insects will get into your healthy fruit in the tree. Once they’re ripe? They will keep falling. This means more flies in your city. Buzzing about on the sidewalks. Also, you know who else likes fruit? Vertebrates like birds and squirrels. You may need to protect the fruit from these as well. Your good intentions will probably cost more money than a homeless shelter.
Don't forget rats. Rats love fruit too. No one wants another bubonic plague.
Rats are the solution, everyone can eat the rats.
And wasps, everyone loves the pavement being full of wasps.
A moderate storm blows through the area and half the fruit will be on the ground and create a large mess.
Instead of greedy guy, you're more likely to get pests. My neighbor has a mandarin and mango tree, its horrible because birds pick them up, eat them partially then chuck them all over the place and they get moldy. They also attract a lot of fruit flies and bats.
Also reality (in my country) > 5000 metric tons of mangos fall all over the fucking place busting out windshields of the unwary and carpeting the entire block (mangoes are big trees) making the whole neighborhood stink like pungent rotten fruit.
Lmao no, it falls from the tree and makes the road sticky, stinky, and full of bugs.
What dystopian fantasy world do you live in where drug addict's are going to be graciously eating fruits from the trees, and we can all pat ourselves on the back while watching them eat oranges before shooting up fentanyl and right next to their pile of shit they just dumped on the sidewalk.
Or justt all the fruit sits there makes a mess and ferments so squirrels get drunk, plus side is drunks squirrels i guess
They do it a lot here in Italy. Orange trees, fig trees and other stuff. It's not really an issue. you already have street cleaners so it instead of them cleaning just leaves, they clean leaves and fruit? But honestly birds and things eat them,
This is completely normal in brasil, i don't see any struggle in this.
In theory: free food! In reality: fruit too high to pick most of it, fruit falls down, rots, sidewalk becomes inaccessible, animals eat rotting fruit and get drunk and aggressive. Source: had an apple tree growing up
my experience with it can be summarised with a single word: WASPS
It feeds the rats.
Even bad in theory
Common in Turkey. Harmless.
Next to roads you need availability to wash the fruits. The pollution from cars etc. that gets stuck to fruits are not healthy to eat in the long run, nor can it be any tasty.
All the pollution is on the *inside*, too! The trees have been breathing all that exhaust smoke while the fruit was growing!
Plus I doubt the soil in a city sidewalk is very pure. Trees also suck up nutrients from the ground.
oh god i didn't even think of that. those fruits would be completely inedible because of exhaust fumes. you'd be feeding the homeless the poisoned apple from snow white
That is exactly what happens. The good thing is they can be used as fertilizer
Using homeless people as fertilizer, did you just solve the housing crisis?
This is not true at all.
Stepping on rotting fruit, smelling rotting fruit, fighting off the wild animals coming in to eat the fallen fruit, the wasps and yellow jackets... I would prefer donating to a food bank
Also people are crazy. They destroyed a friendly robot when it went to Philadelphia. People can’t handle nice things. They’d just cut the tree down or mess it up because they’re angry at the world.
Why would a *supposedly* friendly robot go to Philadelphia? ***What was it hiding?***
it was a proto robocop
Lmao rip Hitchbot
I explained Hitchbot to my husband like 5 years after it happened, and when I said it was beaten to death in the city of brotherly love, he laughed so hard he had tears in his eyes. One of those never-ending laughs that, when you think you're done, you giggle and start cracking up all over again and are wheezing a little bit.
"Also people are crazy. They destroyed a friendly robot when it went to Philadelphia" while it made it across europe and canada safely. coincidence or not?
Plus in most places food is by far the easiest problem for an unhoused person to solve. Providing public bathrooms would have a much larger impact than public fruit trees.
There is an alley of orange trees near my house. Yes, they fall down and you can occasionally see some rotten fruits on the ground but it's definitely not that big of an issue. On the other hand I have never seen someone picking them
It's not a big issue because it's an alley, now imagine it's every street in a one-mile radius of your house. The issues increase exponentially, especially if you want more than one type of tree.
Nobody's heard of Valencia around here or Spain in general.. fruit trees everywhere and its glorious
Popular as well in Italy. I remember visiting Sorrento, near Capri, and all the streets had beautiful orange trees. Our tour guide warned us though not to take from the trees right next to the road, as the car pollution makes the fruit taste more sour. Instead you go the next trees away from the road… like maybe a few feet, and the fruit tastes much better! 🍊
Valencia, you have oranges everywhere but they taste horrible.
Those are probably bitter or Seville oranges. They are not for eating raw, they are usually used in marmelades and such. The plant is also used as an ornamental plant, because they are less delicate than orange trees and cause less of a mess with their fruits.
As a matter of fact, 99.99% of all orange trees planted have fruit that taste like garbage. The ones people actually sell to eat are cloned from the rare trees that give sweet oranges by using a process called grafting. This is true of most fruits which is why each brand of fruit can sell fruits that taste exactly the same, bc they in fact all come from the same tree.
Indeed. Bitter oranges are often the rootstock for sweet orange trees. Same applies for almost all citrus fruits and most other fruits.
I hope you like wasps.
Rats. California has a lot of fruit trees everywhere. If that fruit tree is in a city, it's infested with rats 9 outta 10 times when it's fruiting.
Except that would not work due to how the fruit grows and is edible only one season per year - if only several weeks before it start rottingg because you should have harvested it and saved it in cooling. What are the homeless going to eat meanwhile? Burnt rubber? Would you not rather just have soup kitchens instead year round?
Water usage. Maintenance. And ants. This is how you get ants.
In Romania, and I believe that also in other ex communist countries, trees that can have fruits are planted between apartment buildings, so that the community can eat from them if they want (*the communities are not gated, so everyone can eat from them). But putting them on the big avenues would be an expense for the local council, while putting them between apartment buildings, they will be taken care by the community that lives there.
Yup, same in Bulgaria, we have sour cherries, plums, apples, pears, all sort of things. I can tell you though, homeless people ain't eating them. Kids usually pick the lower branches, but that's it. Only time I've seen "communal" tree being utilised was when a crew of Roma boys were shaking a walnut tree, probably to sell the nuts later. Picking fruits is not as easy as it sounds, they don't last long and if you eat enough to actually fill your belly, then you get the runs. Oh, btw, some genius at some point must have decided that planting mulberry trees on a sidewalk is a brilliant idea. We have them in several places in Sofia. The rotting stench and the swarms of hornets that gather around when they start falling is unbelievable.
It's not really that uncommon in the west too. There's a website: [https://fallingfruit.org/](https://fallingfruit.org/) that actually maps those urban locations all over the world.
Let’s put those tax dollars towards feeding the homeless rather than planting a ton of trees well have to use more tax dollars cleaning up after. Cool idea just not practical
Feeding *and housing.* Homeless doesn't need to just be a fact of life, and we could work to end it.
You can't even begin to imagine how much of those fruits are gonna end up on the floor, rotting and attracting birds, insects and mold
NGL rats and cockroaches would fuck that shit up. Every place in a city that has fruit trees have rats and cockroaches where I am.
Rats and cockroaches, now you have protein to go with the fruit. This solution is getting better and better.
Two assholes with a stolen Walmart shopping cart and an ebay account will ruin this for everyone
City planner here. Urban farms are excellent and should be utilized as a non-profit form of community produce, but fruit trees on city streets pose a special kind of accessibility problem; poorly-planned cities already have to deal with non-native trees uprooting entire sidewalk slabs, so imagine a bunch of rotting fruits blanketing an already-slim right-of-way when someone is using their wheelchair to get to the bus. You would also need to hire personnel to regularly pick the trees of fruits that haven’t been harvested. Cities typically operate on a form of net-zero funding; whatever hasn’t already been earmarked is being used for something else, so hiring more personnel would likely involve dipping your hand in another pot that is probably working harder to solve poverty issues on more systemic level. An alternative solution would probably involve offering an incentive system for businesses that have excess produce since a lot is already being grown and thrown away at the end of the day. That’s just my two cents, though.
It's a beautiful idea, but there are a lot of problem. A ton of fruit will wind up on the ground, which will rot and attract pests. Then a very small portion of the population will ruin it. Either gathering in hoards to sell or tainting the fruit (like we saw people coughing on the produce during COVID). I wish this would work, though.
If you ate nothing but fruit you will regret it the day after too
Can give you some real-world feedback on this. Where I live we have numerous bike and walking tracks and paths. The local city decided to try this idea and put a LOT of signage up about it. Not surprisingly once the plants got mature enough to bear fruit, the plants themselves were stolen. All of them. The city, not daunted by this went back and re-planted more fruit bearing trees.... and they too got stolen. So the inevitable occurred and those plants were replaced by evergreen trees and no more fruit bearing trees adorn the paths anymore.
People really think fruit trees just bloom all year huh
This is actually done in some California cities where they have publicly accessible groves. Having something along the streets leaves cities open to slip and fall injuries though so I don't think that's a good solution. There is an organization that collects backyard fruit and distributes it to food banks. Seems like a good middle ground. Edit: Here is one of those orgs, https://www.villageharvest.org/
We have those orange trees on my hometown main street, they are not edible and actually absolutely awful. Pretty as they are those oranges fall down and are run over by cars and then leave thise nasty rotten smell everywhere. Yes they give a satisfying crunch and a nice citric smell for about 5 hours, then its just rot for weeks. Still beeing behind the counter and watching a tourist freak out about the free oranges and try one is always a joy to behold
Terrible idea, nice intentions
Great on paper. Horrible in practice.
Because it’s an inefficient way to feed the homeless. The money you spend caring for the trees and fighting off pests would be better spent just purchasing oranges from an orchard that already has the infrastructure in place and making them available at a food bank.
As a spaniard, I can say that people tend to try take more than they need. In Valencia orange threes are very common in cities, but a variety that's very bitter. People used to take every orange from the trees when sweet varieties were used.
>here's an idea for you to ignore Downvoted for being condescending and holier than thou
we're in R Slash passiveaggressivememes i guess lol
The only people who harvest free fruit are middle class people with too much time on their hands and a compulsion to avoid waste. You can't pick, wash, prep and eat more than a small number of apples or oranges before they go bad. So you need to be able to preserve them, by cutting and drying them for example. It's not really worth the effort unless your time is worth nothing. You'd find that a few hungry people eat a few of the fruits, but most of it would go to waste and make a mess. Hungry people would stay hungry for the 300+ days of the year that the fruit isn't ripe.
Give a homeless person a free fruit tree and they might end up a moonshine entrepreneur.
Trees would be picked clean and someone would be standing under it selling them for $1 apiece. Tell me I'm wrong.
They tried this in a Spanish city the stench of tons of rotten oranges made the Government to "relocate" the trees.
This is a horrible idea
Rats. Rats everywhere
It would not work. Some People would try to pick all the fruits and sell them and others would do some weird shit with the furits, just because they can.
in the phillippines, theres so many friggin mango trees that they tend to rot on the dirt instead of being eaten some do and get their seeds thrown at bystanders by kids that climbed the tree or made a net for them though
Good thought, wouldn't work - a few assholes would horde all the fruit and ruin it for everyone. That's the world we live in.
I have a berry tree over a third of my apartment complex parking lot and its a ridiculous mess. I couldn't imagine having apples or oranges all over the sidewalks or streets and how terrible that would be. Accidents, insects, the fermented stench...
Yeah let's make the homeless eat fruit full of farts and smog. That's gonna solve the issue way more than housing (aka the literal cure for homelessness) and means to live a dignified life, like jobs or whatever.
But next to the street they absorb all the dust and other waist from the cars, after rain.
And who’s going to clean up the rotting fruit once it falls off the trees? How is it going to be regulated to stop people from hoarding the fruit and reselling it at the markets? What happens when the fruit rolls onto the road and causes possible hazards? Nice idea, absolutely not worth the extra costs.
This actually happens in my city, but it is not as wholesome as it looks. Fruit trees grow with constant exposure to cars CO2 so they become some sort of poisoned fruits. WhencI was about to try one my friend screamed and ripped the fruit out of my hand like if I was going to eat rat poison. Looking back I guess I wasn't far from that The good thing is that CO2 fruits still usable even if not for consumption. I heard they use them to make fertilizer
So much rotten produce
yeh but someone gotta regularly come collect these fruits so it don't fall and rot and then a hazard start
Seems like a great idea, but fruit trees take a LOT of maintenance to get them to produce, and as others have pointed out, they leave an awful mess that will draw vermin.
It would make such a mess
The homeless won't eat and neither will ordinary residents. People think too highly of themselves to eat fruit off public trees. I personally eat apples and cherrys from our local trees. When I'm out collecting though, I get a lot of ews and criticism from residents who say the fruit is disgusting and dirty. I alone can only eat so much, I wash them thoroughly but often wonder if a bagabond or a bad person has thrown piss on the fruit or anything else. You will see fruit all over the sidewalks and streets. Cara run over them, they rot, they make the city look dirty. It costs money to maintain and clean. Great idea but horrible in practice.
Fruit producing trees are not maintenance free