That's my first time seeing the Florida standard and I cannot see a definition of the trunk flare or a statement of the need to have that point exposed and at or near grade. Boa not to violate a copyright or deny the man his due but could you please look at your Spec Trees and see if there is mention of these specifications found in the usa standard:
. The European nursery standards specify root pruning at every step, 4”-8” further out each time, to avoid these defects. The ANSI Z60 American nursery standards do not address this problem.
Root “balls”, the volume of soil packed inside a young tree’s packaging, have been getting rounder and rounder every year. Whether trees are grown in containers or dug from the field B&B (balled and burlapped), soil is commonly heaped around the trunk, where it does not belong. The trunk flare, where the trunk naturally turns into roots and the tree joins the earth, is all too often buried early in the growing process, and buried deeper yet at planting time. Some specifications still ignore the requirement in ANSI A300 (Part 6)-2005, 63.6.2.3, “The bottom of the trunk flare SHALL be at or above finished grade”. Instead, they instruct the landscape contractors to plant the root BALL at ground level, so the landscapers obediently follow this instruction, with disastrous consequences.
Arborists should have the ANSI standard—available from TCIA—in hand when they talk to growers and landscape architects and landscapers about deep planting. When these professionals see with their own eyes that the American Nursery and Landscape Association and the American Society of Landscape Architects are represented in ANSI, they will realize that they don’t have a stem to stand on when they bury trees. The entire green industry agrees that we should always be able to find the trunk flare.
Technically, the rootball does not even include the soil above the trunk flare. It is “measured from the bottom of the trunk flare to the bottom of the ball.” (ANSI A300 (Part 6)-2005, 63.6.1.2) If the flare is found and set to grade, in a hole “a minimum of 1.5 times the diameter of the root ball” (63.6.1.4), with mulch “applied near, but not touching the trunk” (63.6.2.9), the tree roots will not need to grow up in search of oxygen. But even if these standards are followed at planting time, the tree may not grow well. For some reason, there is nothing in the standard about the making sure the roots, at least the major roots, are growing away from the stem. Why not? You’ll have to ask your organization’s representative to the ANSI committee, and get your comments in before the standard is revised again in 2010. The ANSI pruning standard does not currently cover root pruning—perhaps with the right kind of input, that standard can change to provide needed guidance on this simple act of arboriculture.
The above from the page 8 article here:
http://www.tcia.org/PDFs/TCI_Mag_July_07.pdf
This article is being revised for Arbor Age to include oz standards. Also needed are Tree Planting standards in oz--links please?