female ginkos have smelly fruit. Sweetgums have spikey balls that are rough on bare feet.

Female GINGKO... spelling

Another idea is the Osage Orange. Very HEAVY fruit.

Some people are annoyed by the nuts of Chestnut or walnut. I like the Osage Orange idea. Hard orange sized fruit with no use whatsoever.

Alex

I presume for a film, there's more interest in visible quantity of debris, than its 'nastiness' quality. Planes (Platanus) drop lots of big, coarse leaves that only rot down very slowly, and also chunks of loose bark, twigs, etc.

But I guess it'd be simplest to just cart in a couple of extra truckloads of stuff from elsewhere to use on the film set, so any old stuff will do. Contact local tree surgeons for supplies of shredded prunings.

Resin

PS GinKGo ;-)

You are filming the story of my life. Come to my house and film in my backyard! I have not a single pine tree in my yard but they loom menacingly over my yard from three sides, ignoring the fence that delineates my property line and dropping the tree trash all over my yard. It literally falls behind me on my patio as I am sweeping. I stroke with my broom and make a clean sweep and then look behind me and there is a leaf, or a needle, a cone, or some other greenish black debris. When visitors are coming over and I want the patio to look nice, I have to sweep 10 minutes before the company arrives ... by the time they leave, the patio is covered again. I had half of my patio screened-in recently and this has saved my sanity. However, my flowerbeds are covered in needles and other debris. The ground has been made acidic, therefore limiting what will grow. Grass is out of the question. I have a pine needle backyard. I literally have tiny little pine trees growing over my entire backyard. No kidding. I have these cute little green pine trees growing like grass over my property. I rip them out of the ground constantly, but they are everywhere. Do I HATE pine trees? You bet I do. And yes, like the character in your movie, I literally throw the sticks, sometimes large branches, and pine cones over my fence. I heard someone yell, "Hey, stop that!" once when I was tossing debris over and I screamed back, "They are your damn trees, so this is your tree crap!" In conclusion, if I found my dream house and it was under pine trees ... forget about it.

Too bad people take what trees have to offer for granted.
Especially the poster in GA. It's sad to see.

Anyway weeping willows drop twigs and stuff on a windy day.
And that's something you could have year round. If the setting is in the spring and you're talking about sweetgum seedballs and I see the movie it will end up on nitpickers.com or one of those.

On second thought, you could film a flowering callery pear split and explode suddenly. Could make for an interesting scene.

Even quality well respected healthy oaks can drop ground covering amounts of acorn debris. Some people are allergic to male oak tree pollen in the early springtime.

Oaks, along with pecans trees and other hardwood trees, also when mature, begin to shed branches frequently.

Then there are some softwood maples which canopy over other peoples property and drop major branch failures. Those branches are large enough to scare those in their house, when they hear the sound of the branch impacting their roof or side of the house.

I have a neighbor, whose maple tree is growing in a manner that it puts so much force against his neighbor's privacy fence to make the fence lean and appear as if the fence is about to fall down.

I'm complaining mainly about the fast growing larger growing cultivar, softwood maples that do not even need the degree of wind force caused by strong thunderstorms for their limbs to fail. Instead, these maples in mind are those which grow fast and display branch failure even during gentle breeze events that often occur.

How may people are like me, and hate having to keep pulling out the seemingly never ending spring sprouting of the seeds that maples drop in many a landscape bed? The sprouting acorns of oaks are bad enough, but not nearly as irriatiating as all those maple seedling that seem to be sprouting during the entire springtime. This year was so bad for those production of airborn spinning seeds that in older neighborhoods with bigger maples, the maple seedlings could be seen growing in-mass out of peoples gutters.

Also, what about the hardwood but still brittle, fast growing and huge old cottonwood trees; when their massive and heavy branches fail and damage neighbor's fences, roofs, landcapes, and even risk their lives and health.

Another problem with the female cottonwood trees is all the fluff which floats from them in the spring, it clogs external air conditioning units, and the fluff carries allergins, which cause lots of people to suffer with adverse sinus reactions.

Yet with all the hassles such debis often causes, it is just part of natures way of suppling material to aid the process nature goes through, when regenerating humus and good top soil. Most of it is ultimately, a much needed and very good thing.

More generally speaking, even lots of the best benefits people experience in life come with hassles and consequence; with which, most of us would rather not have to contend.

Osage oranges are good. Buckeyes. Honey Locust with their extremely long seed pods.

There in San Jose, your best bet might be eucalyptus or a female gingko.

Pines came to my mind also. Usually a carpet of needles, sprinkled with cones anywhere someone is not cleaning up. They also drip resin.

I like the Callery Pear (Bradford Pear) idea best . . . if even just one person is convinced by the film not to buy one of the things . . .

Resin

In San Jose? I agree with Blue Gum or Eucalyptus globulus,
always dropping something.
Sam

In response to the poster who wrote: "Too bad people take what trees have to offer for granted. Especially the poster in GA. It's sad to see." The pine trees in GA are known to fall over in heavy rains. They grow extremely tall but have shallow roots and therefore in a heavy rain can just fall. I have lived in Atlanta for 5 years, in that time, a father was killed in his bedroom, a mother and both of her babies were killed in their car, a visiting Emory professor from Japan was killed in his car, and a young college student was killed in his car -- all by falling pines in a heavy rain. I not only hate pines, I fear them.

My friends have a HUGE pinecone I believe they found out in Washington state. I don't know the species, but the experts here (or in the conifers forum) could suggest the species.

"My friends have a HUGE pinecone I believe they found out in Washington state"

Post a pic for identification. Or see if it matches anything at the link below.

Resin

Here is a link that might be useful: white pine cone pics

I agree with Katrina about cottonwood, but I would suggest using a Male - every spring they drop 6" long flower clusters & sticky bud caps that stain clothes. In the summer, 2' branches with large green leaves attached routinely fall down. Autumn - loads of fun with thick leathery large leaves matting down, smothering everything in their wake, plus tons of 1/4" diameter twigs.

I have a big ol' magnolia (northern, but I guess southern would do the same) that's always dropping stuff - flowers, leaves, twigs, and those fuzzy little pods. I think it drops more stuff, more consistently even than the maples. The debris piles up pretty deep under there.

There was bamboo, no idea what type except it travels vigorously, here when we bought the house in May 2005. This bamboo is against the whole front of the house and overhangs the sidewalk leading to the front door (which is far away on the east side, more than 75' back.

The bamboo sheds constantly, tough beige leaves, lots of litter, also stem things. Perhaps it has a bug now because a lot of leaves are turning yellow, are sticky, and look dirty. They don't like to be watered but a crop of labrador violets seeded under them so I water lightly anyway. This bamboo RAINS debris. Endless raking and sweeping. But it's pretty, sprouts up tons of new shoots every July, and makes a nice screen, and the birds like it. But very messy!

I've added about 1/2 an inch of manure compost every early spring and the dense roots rise right over it and mat in thick visible hair over the surface. The labrador violets are very brave setting up house in that bamboo (and everywhere else).

mswmom: You say you've lived in GA for 5 years. Where are you from originally? I think you hit the nail on the head when you listed people killed by falling (pine) trees, then said you feared them.

People are injured and killed by all kinds of trees. My husband's uncle was riding a bike across campus when he was killed by a branch heavy with ice that fell on him. It's rare but it happens.

I'm not fond of standard southern pines very near the house because they are always dropping stuff. On the positive side, they grow fast and provide shade that is welcome in the South, especially before we had A/C. Some people refer to pine needles as "gold" because they make good mulch.

Watch a grove of pines swaying gracefully in the wind. Listen to wind blowing through pines, especially at night - the sound is musical, unlike anything else. These are gifts.

I recall from another post that you are an MSW. If your neighbors' pines are leaning over your yard and dropping unwelcome stuff on your patio, can you sit down and discuss the problem with them, offer a solution? If this is making you so angry, and causing so much stress, perhaps you could offer to pay part of the cost to have the trees taken down (even though they are not your trees). Maybe you can come up with another win-win solution.

Take care,
Pam

Resin... none of those was exactly it. But I'm sure pine cones can vary. What west coast pine has the biggest cones?

Hi VCT,

The longest is Pinus lambertiana (up to 60cm long); the heaviest is Pinus coulteri (up to 40cm long). Also check Pinus sabineana and Pinus jeffreyi.

Note that all of these are native to CA, or at best southern OR; in WA it would have to be planted. Try to get a pic, or at least a description, out of them!

Resin

Sycamore or weeping willow.

Shallow rooted pine trees question? A couple years ago, I planted quite a few Loblolly pines on two different pieces of property. The Lot sizes were, each, around a half acre; give or take; and I planted two ataggered rows of the pines.

On one of the lots with much more virgin clay soil, I also interplanted, between the pine tree spacing, some Nellie R. Stevens holly.

My reasoning for staggering two rows of the pines was my intent for their roots to spread and become entangled together in a manner which I perceived would make a stonger base for the pines. It was my hope that by so doing, the pines would be at less risk for becoming up-rooted in the silty loam soil where the double row is planted, and also more stable in the clay soil where the Nellie R. Stevens holly were added to help create more rooting mass.

Over time should my planting patterns prove to successfully prevent up-rooting in a manner better than if I had planted only single rows of pines?

Katrina,... Your idea makes sense to me.

I wonder if the OP ever checked on the suggestions....

Terry

To pam_chesbay: I probably should have been more clear in my original post. I realize now that it made me sound like an angry, unreasonable person. I actually live in a house in which my backyard butts up against a community of townhomes. If you hop the fence in my backyard, you are on the property of these townhomes. There is a length of ground where the pine trees are growing (this is what was left of a former forest area), then the driveway/road of the townhomes, and then the actual homes. So, the area behind my home is not my neighbor's yard. It is the property of the townhomes and that is where I was throwing the sticks when the person yelled at me and I yelled back. The neighbors to the sides of me (my real neighbors) also have pine trees that are hanging over my property, but I don't make a big deal of it to them. There is no way they would cut down their trees and even if they agreed, it would cost a fortune that none of us would be willing to spend (there are lots of trees and they loom hundreds of feet in the air). Anyway, I get along great with my neighbors. I have actually solved the problem by having a screened porch built. Now the tree debris stays off of my patio, I don't have to sweep, and everyone is happy. Thanks for your supportive post!

Katrina:

You wrote: "I planted quite a few Loblolly pines . . . I planted two staggered rows of the pines ... I also interplanted, between the pine tree spacing, some Nellie R. Stevens holly."

I plan to use loblolly pines in a similar way (staggered) with understory trees in some areas and broadleaf evergreens (like Nellie Stevens) in others. (I have a good supply of loblollies)

My questions are about spacing: How far apart did you plant the staggered loblollies? Did you use the same spacing between the pines and hollies?

I do hope you see this post. This thread drifted from one topic to another.

Many thanks,
Pam

2 words--"red mulberry"

Break a (purple) leg!

Our oak trees drop an enormous amount of pollen in the spring. It looks like tumbleweeds, and can be picked up by the armload. It makes an enormous mess for a couple of weeks. Your actor could throw a bunch of this stuff in his neighbor's face and give him a really funny allergy attack.

In Washington, DC: Black Cherry (Prunus Serotina).
Birds love the fruit and so you get hundreds of them
up there eating and digesting. What they don't eat
falls to the driveway and makes a dark blotch.
Then people slip trying to walk on the seed covered
patio (like tiny marbles). Did I mention
the caterpillars?

Pam. If I remember right I think I planted the Loblolly trees 10 feet apart and stagered them in two rows. I planted the Nellie R. Sevens between the ones in front row.

The loblolly trees will be pruned to have clean trunks to the same rate of height as the Nellie R Stevens grow each year.

The purpose in planting them so close together, was to ultimately create a dense hedge which I hope, along with other trees I planted on the property. will help absorb and deflect some of the unwanted traffic noise.