The way people prune crepe myrtles in my neighborhood drives me crazy

I mean, I see it every spring around here in Atlanta. People go after crepe myrtles with chainsaws and chop them down to stubs, leaving those ugly knuckles. It's called crepe murder and it's totally wrong for the tree. They do it because they think it makes more flowers, but actually it weakens the branches and makes them snap in storms. Last week I watched a guy take off 80 percent of his tree's crown in about 15 minutes. Has anyone else had luck convincing neighbors to just do light thinning instead?

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uma_patel1916d ago

Walked past a house yesterday where the whole top was gone, just six ugly stumps sticking up. They always say it's for more flowers but I've seen properly pruned ones bloom just fine. Try telling a neighbor to leave the crown alone and they get defensive. Atlanta's full of crepe murderers every March, it's just sad.