A Sociopath On The Loose In Soho

Apparently there is no place for poor old honeylocusts in the new downtown:

The three honeylocust trees on the corner of West Houston Street and West Broadway share their little slice of the city with seven newspaper boxes, four garbage cans, two billboard advertisements for a London vacation, and one Starbucks coffee shop.

The trees have been there for years, in the middle of a sidewalk that is newly widened, but the other day they were not looking good. They had no leaves, a branch was broken on the one in the middle, and all three appeared to have been heavily pruned in their upper reaches.

Still, given the events of the last month, it could be worse: Apparently, someone has been trying to kill these trees.

It seemed strange to Ian Dutton, too, when he was walking past one day a few weeks ago and noticed a layer of rock salt poured, rather neatly, on the dirt at the base of all three trees — but not on the surrounding sidewalk. Mr. Dutton, a pilot who lives in the neighborhood and is a member of the local community board, happens to be a graduate of a class on tree stewardship offered by the city’s Department of Parks and Recreation, and he worried that the heavy rains forecast for the next day would help the salt soak into the soil.

“I was like, ‘I must be crazy,'” Mr. Dutton said Wednesday. “I mean, who would do that?”

. . .

For the next two weeks, nothing much happened. Then, on March 20, Mr. Dutton’s wife, Shea Hovey, passed the trees when she going to the subway and noticed that the salt was back — again, caked around the base of the tree but not on the sidewalk. Another call to the Parks Department brought another cleanup crew, along with increased suspicion that this was not an accident.

. . .

The company that owns the adjacent building said it was not involved and had no information on the matter.