Oh well… It’s a very pretty tree.
They are nice trees for your home. Just a really bad choice for a pasture.
Whatever tree you choose, start with the biggest one you can afford to have trucked in. Fence it off and keep it irrigated. It may cost $1,000 and up but if you go small and cheap you are planting the shade for the next owner of your place.
On the cypress topic, I planted Carolina Sapphire cypress trees to screen. They are reported to grow 5 feet per year, and I swear they have exceeded that. They are kind of shaggy and really fit a rural environment.
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Amen.
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Actually the biggest limiting factor in tree growth is water. I planted 12 inch tall bare root willow oaks from Arbor Day about 20-25 years ago. They are huge and have a good canopy. They are on the west side of the barn and I put in gutters with buried downspouts that came out next to the trees. So everytime it rained they got watered like crazy. They outgrew the willow oaks that were 6+ feet tall I got from Lowes that I planted on the other side of the barn. Today the bare root trees are a lot taller and bigger trunks than the ones I bought that were bigger. But the smaller ones are competing with other trees on that side. I did just this year block off those trees from the horses because I didn’t want the horses stepping on and destroying their roots. I think I do get some acorns from them so I am glad to keep the horses away from those too.
I also replanted a tulip poplar that was a volunteer in a bad spot . The beavers… horses did a number on it’s trunk for years. I covered it with anything I could to keep them off of it and now that it is big they don’t bother it anymore. I planted it close to an old cedar tree that had gotten its top blown off from lightning. The cedar tree eventually pretty much recovered and this poplar has gotten big and I have a nice shady spot there that the beaver enjoys. I told her so.
I also planted a Shumard and a Nuttal oak but they haven’t gotten as big as the willow oaks. I tried a weeping willow in a low spot in the pasture but the horses kept eating it. I tried to fence it off and that worked for a while. Unfortunately we had several long hot dry summers and it was not near a water source so I got tired of carrying buckets to water it. So it died. Not that successful with pecan trees - the horses eat the scion and leave the root stock so you are left with a scrubby multi-trunk bush that doesn’t make very many pecans or a nice tree with shade.
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We just love the fact they grow incredibly fast and block my view of the neighbors. Their pool is right by my fence line. I’ve seen things no one should be subjected too.
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If you are in the East, I would vote for a Tulip Poplar. You will have to fence it off because horses Love it. However, it is completely non-toxic to horses, very fast growing, and because it is an odd, Old! species, essentially bug and disease free. None of our current possible or may become possible bugs, fungi, or diseases hit it.
I would not plant it near a building. They can hit a 100 feet without trying.
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Also, on growth rates. I have a volunteer Tulip Poplar that is 20 years old. It is about 30 feet tall and producing decent shade. I have another that is about 50 years old. It is pushing 70 feet and is very, very much a major shade tree. Any shade tree is going to take time. Remember, the quote: the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago!
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Tulip poplars are nice but they are like weeds. They will grow everywhere. If I don’t mow pastures for a few weeks, I have tulip poplars everywhere.
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This is actually untrue. While a B&B tree may start out bigger, their root system is so heavily damaged by removal that they take years to recover.
I’m not saying go full bare-root, either.
A decent sized container tree with a ~1.5" caliper versus a gigantic 3"+ caliper B&B tree - plant them next to each other and in two years you won’t be able to tell the difference. The smaller trees recover from shock and establish so much faster.
https://www.siteone.com/en/articles/article/Container-Trees-versus-Ball-and-Burlap-Trees
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Stay away from the Austrees. Yes, they grow fast but are, consequently, very weak. They won’t last.
Can’t really give a good recommendation, but I can share what I’ve seen. My grandparents planted soft maples all around the house so that they would have shade faster because they grow faster than the hard maples, and now ~45 years later, they’re a nightmare. They’re breaking apart and falling every time the wind blows.
I would fence around anything you put in a horse pasture - we have a number of trees that horses absolutely murdered by chewing all the bark off all the way around - one of those was an enormous, grand old oak tree. Super sad.
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Our property has tons of trees on it because it was heavily forested when my family bought it and converted it into a farm. We tried to keep as many trees as possible, including in the pasture. I see the horses consistently prefer the eastern white pine’s shelter/shelter over everything else: including oaks, maples, poplars, sumac, and beech. There’s only a handful of pine along the fence line, but a ton of other trees and they still always hang under the pine.
My unscientific observation is that the pine has fewer biting bugs, just from visiting them in the pasture to see how everyone is doing. It also seems to provide better rain buffer. They don’t try to eat pine the way they eat everything else, which I also think contributes to its continued success being adjacent to greedy tree gobblers.
The drawback is they are slow growing. So this reply may not be helpful at all.
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American sycamore. Not the other sycamore that is toxic. I planted a small one when my big shade tree was hit by lightning and killed. It’s been about 6 years and it’s absolutely huge.
I planted about 30 Empress trees (Paulownia) in 2020. They would have done better if I had fenced them off and kept the deer and horses from eating them, but are getting really big and they are easy to propagate by root cuttings. They also tend to be pretty invincible once established. The horses and deer eat them and they grow back year after year. Any branches that get in reach will get eaten. The horses love the leaves. Here’s one.
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Be aware that one variety of Paulownia is invasive in some areas. Most aren’t though.
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Not only are they invasive, but they are UG-LEE. Mature ones here look like weeds on steroids. Yours look fine but all I see around here are hideous after a few years and people actually do plant them here. The sides of the interstates around here have them growing between the rocks like weeds.
Sycamores and paulownias are two of my favorite trees. But the former grows like molasses (I’m surprised yours is huge!) and the latter is highly invasive to the point of regulation in some states.
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there’s one type of Paulownia which is invasive, but not all are. Most have seeds that are really pretty “stupid” in that they don’t have a high germination rate, and/or are incredibly finicky about their soil
We always plant container trees, but agree that it’s worth the money to go as big as possible. I’ve always heard that “in five years, one can’t tell the difference,” but I figure for that five years, I can tell the difference, and that five years of difference is worth the extra cost to me.
For the OP, I suggest cedar elm, grows in zones 6 to 9:
https://www.arborday.org/trees/treeGuide/TreeDetail.cfm?ItemID=1075
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One of our typical (sometimes tornado inducing) July storms last year picked an empty Tim’s cup out of a recycling bin and carried it a minimum of about 600m to spear it on a branch of a tree. Found while hacking around the pastures.
My caption was:
I knew about Kentucky Coffee trees. I even have one in my back yard. Imagine my surprise when my horse and I happened upon this beautiful Canadian Coffee tree!
Too bad the bloom was spent. I could have used a little pick me up after a long couple of days.
For the OP, willows are lovely, and grow quickly into shade trees, but must be fenced. A couple of old dude/lady horses will bark and girdle them pretty quickly (for the ASA? that was our best guess because they left all the other trees alone) even when giant sized. Once that happens you’re left with a LOT of work to remove them.
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