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Cleanup
Trees with large fruit (royal poinciana or honeylocust), hard fruit (hickory) or very fleshy fruit (fig, persimmon, cherry or queen palm) can create a mess or hazard on a sidewalk and pavement beneath the canopy. Pedestrians can slip and fall on the fruit and it can be unsightly.
If cleanup budgets are low, consider planting trees, such as the fruitless `Rotundiloba' cultivar of sweetgum, without this type of messy fruit in areas with high pedestrian traffic. Ethephon sprays can be used on some species to halt fruit production (Perry and Lagarbo, 1995), but proper timing is crucial.
