This doesn’t mean you don’t like it, but for a variety of reasons which plant that you still choose to grow do you hate the most
For me it’s between these two for very different reasons.
Ugni Molinae (Chilean guava) I have killed 3 tiny plants in the past, and my Villarica Strawberry variety seems to have been in the death spiral since midsummer (due to overfruiting none of which managed to fully ripen) I have 1 plant really thriving in a more shady location which could be the fix for them. They struggle in the summer a lot for me
But my actual answer is Australian finger lime…… I loathe this thing. The fruit is really cool, so I keep it. But it has routine dieback for untold reasons (to me) perhaps from drought stress? And whenever I have to get near this thing it grabs me and refuses to let go. Pruning it = bleeding, not pruning it = bleeding. To me the thorns just touch you and it feels like a stinging insect. I can foresee the day in the not so distant future where I toss this thing into a bin. Curious if others have a plant they hate and interested in hearing their reasons.
I don’t grow it, it grows itself and is highly invasive growing in just about any soil type including old mine tailings. Sweetgum surrounds my house and can grow over 100 feet tall and well over 3 feet diameter. Killing one is a matter of cutting down the tree, painting the stump with tordon, then spraying crossbow on the unlimited root sprouts which try to take over the world. Sweetgum wood is a poor quality firewood but can be burned. It can be sawed into crossties. It can be used to some extent as furniture wood but only where it is completely covered by fabric or other prettier wood. Most sweetgum trees have interlocked fiber meaning it won’t split worth 2 cents. The only thing I’ve found that it is really good for is growing mushrooms by cutting down a tree and dragging it to a shady and damp location near a small stream.
p.s. callery pear is similarly debatable but I graft edible pears on them as rootstocks. I can’t quite hate callery pear like I hate sweetgum.
Yeah sweetgums suck a lot especially for a barefoot connoisseur such as myself. I don’t mind them as much as pine trees though. But I’m in the minority on the conifer hate haha
While I love live oaks, similar issue with getting rid of one, they send out runners dozens of feet from the tree so almost impossible to fully rid your property of one.
Avocados. I hate avocados. I don’t like how they taste, the trees get enomorous, and they smell awful when they rot. The apartment conplex next to ours where I grew up had like 30ft+ tall trees and it would drop hundreds of rotting avocados. I can’t look at one without thinking about the smell. Absolutely horrendous, smelled like a dog kennel that had never been cleaned.
Oh, and because they hang on the tree basically indefinitely unless something knocks them off, it was always dropping avocados.
Citrus is a close second in February because I’m allergic to orange blossoms, but once thats done I don’t hate them. My mom is allergic to both mango and orange blossoms, shes basically dead for the first 2 months of every year.
I’d second that had the question not specified we choose to grow it. Sweetgum clearly chooses you lol. You are correct about the almost unkillable nature. Also, the roots have unlocked eternal existence. Try plowing a field that had been maintained by mowing only. It may look like tiny seedling sprouts above ground, but you’ll find roots that jar the tractor to a halt!
If we’re talking weeds though honeysuckle is another bad one. They like to come up among trellises plants and battle for dominance. Of course spraying is difficult once they are entwined with their host and manual removal is almost no better.
Wild rose and trailing wild blackberry are in this category too. They volunteer where not wanted and hard to spot them take over.
I love avocados but they are temperamental trees at least when young. Soil can’t be dry, but can’t be wet, sun can kill them, wind can break their brittle limbs, and cold can kill them. Mine struggle way more in summer (I irrigate them twice a day) than in winter (no issues yet)
But the fruit is so good and good for you, I’d never allow them to rot haha
If I’m answering Mr knight’s original question, peaches. They’re disease magnets here. They’d be cut down but my wife enjoys the pink blooms. That’s the only thing keeping them from a chainsaw death.
Here’s my ‘plantist’ rant…
I’m with @Fusion_power. Sweetgum is my most hated tree species… the seed capsules are sometimes called “Legos of The South” due to the pain incurred when you step on one barefooted (Yes, I’m from Alabama, and no, these shoes don’t hurt my feet.). They throw up honking big surface roots that will bend/break the shaft on your lawnmower when you hit them, and constantly pose a tripping/ankle-turning hazard, and if you have a driveway or sidewalk, they’ll sure heave them up.
Thorned honeylocust is a very close second in my most hated tree category. Constant source of flat tires on my tractor and UTV.
Distant to those, boxelder, green ash, hackberry and any elms are just regarded as so much trash.
Yeah that’s more on topic. I think peaches are well worth the issues since it’s a top tier fruit (my opinion) and also a very ornamental tree from the foliage to the blooms.
Maybe I’ll find some variety that resists fruit funguses and graft over. My larger two trees are seedlings. I bought one named variety (I think Elberta but am not sure) which was nearly girdled by a goat who was promptly sold off. It flowers and fruits but is also overtaken by a mold of some sort. Doesn’t seem to move as fast as on the seedlings though. I may try removing all the fruit from the seedlings this year to see if the named tree will make fruit if I remove the disease reservoirs. Maybe if the bought tree was the only one with fruit I could ripen some on a reasonable spray schedule. I just refuse to spray many times per season.
Peaches are probably the most ornamental thing I have when in bloom, but also a second rate fruit in my personal taste. I know that’s a very individual thing. I’d much rather spend far less effort on blackberries, blueberries, grapes etc. that said if I have to keep the things around for my wife it would be nice to get something from them eventually!
sounds like balsam poplar here. the wood is useless, and it has a sweet stink when burned. the spring catkins have a amber sap that sticks to everything when it drops and like all poplar, you cut down 1 you have 100. it pops up in old fields and if not controlled it will take over and grow a forest of it. it also breaks easily and falls everywhere in wind.
Of trees that I grow,Bella Gold Peacotum is the one.For probably over ten years,there hasn’t been any fruit.The top died back when young and there wasn’t much growth afterwards.
Now,other Peaches have been grafted on and there may be a small branch or two of the original,left for a chance.
Apparently not everyone has hated sweetgum trees. My daddy once purchased a tract of land where the owner had planted a line of sweetgums that was maybe a couple of a hundred feet long out in a middle of a field. Maybe the fellow thought that the trees were good looking. Who knows?
But the fellow was strange in that he would go around to stores asking for Rhubarb to plant as a joke while knowing that the stores did not have any and that the stores had probably had never even heard of it.
My most hated tree would have to be the glossy privet or sometimes known as the Chinese privet. Totally invasive. Good for nothing as far as I can see. Crowd out other growing trees. Maybe it was imported for decoration around houses, but I don’t see anything decorative about it.
