# What a would a sociopath use to kill a tree **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [April 21, 2007, 1:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-a-would-a-sociopath-use-to-kill-a-tree/401063 "2007-04-21T13:22:48Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 2\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![John\_Carter\_of\_Mars](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/2bfe46/32.png) [@John\_Carter\_of\_Mars](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Carter_of_Mars)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2007, 1:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-a-would-a-sociopath-use-to-kill-a-tree/401063/41 "2007-04-24T13:43:06Z")
[QUOTE=FRDE] Oddly, a few months ago some tree surgeons were working on a tree, I asked them what they would use to kill it and they said ‘it’s mainly salt’. [/QUOTE] Maybe they were jerkin’ you around, maybe they didn’t know themselves. Suffice to say that I’ve killed many a tree, undesirable species that were growing in commercial forests. I’ve seen trucks loaded with five-gallon buckets of Velpar, Tordon and other herbicides, but I’ve never seen a truck of salt headed for the woods. That’s not to say that enough salt, applied in repeated applications, _won’t_ kill a tree. It simply a hard, impractical way to do it when we have miracles of modern chemistry available to do the job easily, quickly, and with deadly efficiency. ---
**Author:** ![WarmNPrickly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/d78d45/32.png) [@WarmNPrickly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WarmNPrickly)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2007, 7:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-a-would-a-sociopath-use-to-kill-a-tree/401063/42 "2007-04-24T19:15:02Z")
Technically, Copper Sulfate is a salt. It is also an herbicide. This may also be where the copper nails rumor came from. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-a-would-a-sociopath-use-to-kill-a-tree/401063.md?page=2)