Tausendschoen (meemaw's smoke house rose) had lived next to a smoke house in total shade for so long that the family remembered it as a yellow rose. It had shallow, massive woody roots but the center looked like Paul Bunyon's broom handle and went down over four feet. It could not be pulled out. R. multiflora platyphylla (the almost century old one that came with the farm) had a woody root core, but depended on near surface roots that went out over twenty feet.(all of which sprouted RRD..so we know the depth that we had to pull them from) Souv. de St. Anne's also managed some shallow very woody roots that reached out six feet in three years. (We shouldn't have moved it.) Perhaps the strangest roots were on Hero from Pickering. When planted the multiflora looked like all the other multiflora they graft onto. When we moved it at two years the roots came up easily , were about eight inches deep and looked for all the world like a giant upside down afro. When we moved it yet again the roots were back to looking woody like other roses. The interim stage ...darned if I know why...one possibility is that the soil was so much better in the upper eight inches that the plant adapted and made gazillions of small roots.

Palm roots actually can have a considerable spread - 30-50' from the trunk on well established specimens - so I'm not sure what relevance that would have in this situation. I'd also be interested on what basis the comparison of crape myrtle roots to palm roots was made, as other than the the crapes producing a very dense network of significant roots beginning immediately adjacent to the trunk and just below the soil surface, as do palms, I don't see much similarity. Palms have an ability to regenerate almost their entire root system, so can be transplanted with a minimal rootball of 12-18" surrounding the trunk. I'm not sure I'd recommend something quite so harsh with a crape of any size.

Cuz people are simple minded morons. After a few springs in a local nursery "selling" trees, ie, answering questions people had about the differences between different types, I can tell you people in general just have no clue. Or they read a couple of pages online and think they are experts. In general, i'd say more people like maples than not...actually, i'd say more people are unaware that any other tree exists. We want fall color they'd say, so we want a maple. And when i'd be so crass to suggest that trees other than maple have fall color i'd either be ignored or looked at as though i'd just sprouted a second head. I came to the conclusion there's a romantic notion most people have that is deeply associated with maples over nearly all other trees. It also exists with birch, esp. paper. Just observations. Valid for no one but myself. And since I only have room for one person in my head at this time, myself is the only person whose opinion I care about. Also...maples are one of the few trees that couples can compromise on. Don't like oaks, they have acorns. Magnolias ate pretty, but such a mess. Can't say the name of elm cuz no one thinks the tree still exists. Catalpa? Yikes...the size of those leaves, all that mess... Maples have decent to excellent fall color, seeds that at least don't cause the mower to bounce, reasonably fast establishment and speed of growth. And the vast majority of people like nothing more than what others like...why else would we be so enamored of most popular lists?

Thank you everyone for your thoughts and comments. I think I knew deep down inside you're all right -- from a logical and practical perspective, you want the door to stick out from the cabinets! But when I see pictures like these from the Subzero-Wolf website, I keep thinking and hoping that someone can tell me they did this very thing and it was perfectly fine...! I will admit, it is more common to find a flush installation example than one where the stove is set back from the cabinet front. And a lot more common to find an example of the range door sticking out from the cabinets! But I have managed to find these examples on Houzz (all looking like they spent a lot of time thinking through the details), and I want to desperately believe that their gables have stayed beautifully white even with daily use of their ovens for years: So it looks like it's been done before, just not very frequently. I've posted questions on the Houzz examples I found, but those pictures were posted years ago and I am not sure if the designer/homeowner will respond. I'm hoping someone could come and tell me from their own experience how this has worked out over the years... And in response to your questions: @mama goose_gw nz60H: Gable is made from white painted maple. If I end up deciding to pull the range out, I will get my countertop fabricator to cut me an extra piece for the gap in the back :) Seems like the safest solution for sure, except I don't know if I want the range to stick out another 1-1/8" from the gables (1-1/8" is the thickness of the door), which sticks out 1" from the rest of the cabinets...! @dan1888: It's a bit too late to modifying the gables without a lot of delay and a lot of annoyance from everyone involved... :( Everyone will want to kill me, including my husband :) @friedajune and @M: It's funny that Wolf does not give any instruction about this in their installation manual! For example, I checked Thermador's installation manuals and they specify the maximum recess depth (thereby requiring the doors to stand further out than the cabinet fronts). In the picture with the damage, it looks like some excess heat came out of the third vent on the side of the door, where the metal is darkened. Wolf's door is solid on the sides and does not have any vents. In any event, I totally understand the physics of heat needing to escape from the oven when you open the door -- though I suppose most of it goes upwards and not sideways. The question remains, how much does it go sideways on a Wolf range, and is it enough to ruin white painted maple? Hmm... @Sophie Wheeler: That's actually not a picture of my stove. It's just an example I found to illustrate what I was talking about. I took a very close look at that picture, and they seemed to have made the gables out of stone (you can see some faint veining on the right side). If I could turn back time, I think I would have had my counter top fabricator make the gables for me out of a white quartz that matched my cabinets... But alas it is too late, unless I want to hold up construction for several weeks! And honestly speaking, I'm not sure if I have room in my budget for mitered quartz gables, though I am really loving the sound of that... :)