oak tree identification

shannon35

Hello all! We just moved into our new home in Palm Coast, Fl and need some help identifying the 2 oak trees in our backyard. Are they laurel oaks?

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stirmantrees

1 Quercus laurifolia - laurel oak
1 Quercus virginiana - live oak

shannon35

Should I be concerned if they're laurel oaks? With Florida being known for having pretty bad storms I've heard alot of bad things with these trees. We just moved into this house about a month ago and now all I can think about is these trees falling down on top of my house during a storm.

stirmantrees

Any tree can present a problem when targets are present. When considering the species Quercus Laurifolia I personally believe they are a wonderful tree until they reach a certain size(large). They are the predominate tree to fail in windstorms in the 16 years I have been cutting trees in Central Florida. I like them until they begin to reach maturity and then they warrant concern for me. It seems that when they get older they can not compartmentalize (stop decay) very well and if you are cutting anything over a couple inch diameter its going to develop a rotten hole. Not to mention they commonly develop heart rot which can give no apparant symptoms as to the degradation of the structural integrity of the limb/lead/trunk.
With that said they can be managed by a competent Arborist for many years.
I personally think one is to be very careful how they prune early on as to keep from removing large leaders later. Many times they are improperly thinned out by removing many internal structural branches. Unfortunately, as stated above they then develop rotten holes where branches have been removed from the larger leads. Combine that with the new growth being forced to the end of the brances (foliar clumping) and you have a recipe for disaster (lion tailing).
Proper pruning of Laurel Oaks near high value targets (house,people,etc.)in my opinion usually consist of Crown or canopy thinning. This is a way of allowing light and wind to pass more freely through the tree and put less force on the roots. You see, lion tailing or over pruning of lower and interior branches stimulates to send more growing activity to the remaining branches....meaning you are going to have a taller, skinnier, weaker, high wind sail tree in the future.

heres a good read by a well respected scholar around here.
http://hort.ifas.ufl.edu/woody/documents/thinning.pdf

Laurel oaks are nice. When they get BIG they have problems. Looks like you have Live Oak as well. They are a USUALLY better structured tree that in the right conditions can live for ever.(almost)

Get a Certified Arborist to get you an estimate. Talk to a couple first. Check references. Check insurance. Ask questions like "what exactly would you cut off my tree to make it safer and why?" Dont argue, just listen. Do your research first(which ofcourse your doing here ) Sometimes a tree needs nothing and it takes a real hero to tell you that.

Dont just cut them down in haste. They look like they may be able to be enjoyed for a while. They give us so much more than we can imagine.

TreeSpecialist

Laurel oaks can be problematic in high winds. They are not the strongest of oaks.

A great deal of their probems comes from how they are pruned. Too often people want to skin out the interiors of the tree which forces length into the branch at the expense of cross sectional diameter increases. The result is long skinny limbs with both the weight and "sail" on the tips of skinny branches which simply have to break in high winds.

Crown reduction pruning can add many years of useful (safe) life to such trees. Crown reduction is as much of an art as a procedure. Done well, it has wonderful result. Done poorly, it looks horrible and can be destructive. Look for a certified arborist familiar with crown reduction pruning. Check references and look at some of his work.

Check out :
Austin Tree Specialists - About Crown Reduction Pruning and Tree Roots for a little basic information about crown reduction pruning.

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shannon35

Well, I'm beginning to think Palm Coast has no one that knows how to deal with my trees when it comes to pruning them properly. Each person that has come by has stated that the trees need to be "lion tailed" so they can be "safer" (this has been said by 4 tree companies). That is the one thing I've learned through all my research NOT to do! I've got the city arborist comming out next week to survey the trees so I am hoping and praying they can guide me w/ someone that will actually know what the heck they are doing and can prune them correctly as stated in the posts above!

TreeSpecialist

"Lion tailing" trees is one of the very worse things one could do to the laurel oak - and for that matter, any tree. It would likely break with the next thunderstorm.

At least you're smart enough to know the difference! Let any arborist try to sell you his or her work without you commenting. If they talk about "lion tailing" or "thinning" the interior, you'll know instantly that you have the wrong person.

Also, if they start talking about removing "suckers" or "water sprouts", you'll know that they know nothing about trees as trees have neither in their crowns.

Trees have epicormic sprouts within the interior of their crowns which add to the tree. These interior sprouts don't "suck" anything from the tree. And they are not "water sprouts" because they occurred because there was enough sunlight to produce food. if one had to name them, "sun sprouts" would be more accurate.

Leaves are the only portion of the tree that produce food. More leaves = healthier trees. Less leaves = less healthy tree.

By the same token anyone who wants to drastically reduce the tree (cuts larger than 3 or 4 inches in diameter) isn't the right person either. A conservative approach - reducing the canopy by only a few feet every year or two - will produce the best results.

A thick canopy full of leaves absorbs the wind's energy equally across the crown and along the length of the branches. When the branch tip is the only part of the tree with the "sail," all of the wind energy will move it in a larger arch causing limb breakage.

The Florida Chapter of the ISA is very strong. Check out their web site. Also look for some of Dr. Ed Gilman's work on pruning trees in Florida to make them more wind resistant.

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shannon35

Treespecialist....I so wish you lived in Palm Coast! I find it so funny how everything that you're not supposed to do to a tree, these "tree workers" say that's exactly what needs to be done. Each time they came to discuss what needs to be done w/ my trees I never said a word against them. I just thought in my head "You're not laying a finger on them". How do these people stay in business? One of the companies I had out here was #1 rated in Flagler county. Makes me think how many unsafe trees are around here due to their work. Well, mine won't be one of them. I will continue to search for the right company that knows what their doing and how to do it. Hopefully I will find them sooner than later. Florida's bad weather season is fast on it's way.

stirmantrees

well im an hour and twenty minutes away. still a bit of a drive.
i knew what kind of tree guys would come out there, that why i told you to ask all those questions. Those of us with the knowledge and skill to properly care for trees are actually few in number. I for one have been working with Laurels all my life and seen what different pruning does over fifteen years or so. good luck with it.

here is another thread showing a crown thinning of my neighbors tree.
crown thinning on my neighbors sycamore

read the thread. you will hear some good insights from the others pros on here

jeffswede

I grew up in New Smyrna, I know your weather. Don't listen to anyone unless they show you their ISA cert. card. I can see from the previous post's, you already got some good advice.
Jeff

TreeSpecialist

Looking over what Stirmantrees offered as an example of "crown thinning", I would respectfully disagree with that type of pruning.

Crown reduction starts at the branch tip. Crown thinning is, in my opinion, destructive, if not completely unnecessary. His example showed a perfectly healthy sycamore tree in the first picture with the interior of the crown stripped out after pruning.

It was nothing more than a mild case of lion tailing.

I reiterate - a tree has a net positive gaiin for every green leaf it can maintain through out the growing season. Removing green tissue unnecessarily is bad pruning. Sycamores, like most other tree species, should have foliage all the way to the center of the tree.

Pruning of mature trees should be focused on the removal of dead, dying, broken or stubbed material. The only green tissue that should be removed would be low limbs over drives, sidewalks, streets, roofs and perhaps low limbs over a yard to allow for activities below the tree.

Additional green tissue pruning can be made on the outer most tips of branches to bring a tree back into better mechanical balance or to reduce limbs subject to breakage due to past poor pruning practices.

Crown reduction is not crown thinning.

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stirmantrees

tree specialist I assume you did not read that thread in its entirety. It seems that among all of the most active members and qualified experts on this forum you seem to disagree with all of them.
Removal of minor epicormic shoots on the interior is by no means detrimental to the health of a vigorous tree. The majority of pruning work was performed on branches 2, 3 and even 4 branches out on every lead. I always pay close attention to scaffolding structure and I completely understand the corelation between leaving enterior SCAFFOLDING branches so as to encourage good healthy taper on leaders. Attention was given to seperation of competing leaders, subordination has been applied 2 times over 2 prunes to strengthen the dominate central leader and not stress the tree. Upon retrospect I prob removed approx. 10 percent of the trees canopy. I have to disagree with your accusation of hacking and protest that it must be from some perspective that the images have led you to believe.
Reduction could very well be considered unnecessary pruning. We have not performed a VTA.
I am confident upon evaluation of any of the leading arborist in the state of florida that my job would past the test.
I must say reduction does have its place. But it does also have its limits when considering applying it to potentialy larger trees. These would need to be discussed with the client upon consultation of course.

Garry Brockley

I completely disagree with most of what you are saying, i have pruned and thinned trees in the UK and Aus, it is a recognised system of tree care, that can greatly improve the growing structure of a tree, trees are systems that grow in forrest conditions so when we grow them in the open they use thier growing patterns to grow in a weak form in many cases, corrective pruning can aleviate many of these problems.
when considering the way we prune we start with dead, dying, diseased and crossing limbs as these are the main causes for problems within the crown.

I have thinned leopard trees and gums in storm areas to reduce the sail area in storm season and had great results, if the wind can pass through the tree without as much resistance then limb failure is less likely.

You talk about isa trained arbs yet you dont seem to have read books like gillman or shigo they both talk about formative pruning and thinning.

I would like to see your evidence that thinning like stirman carried out is an incorrect procedure in tree care

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shannon35

Well, hopefully I have found the right man that can get the job done correctly. I have an ISA arborist from Native Florida Landscapes comming over on Sunday to do a survey of the trees and to give me an estimate on what the job will cost. I did alot of research on this gentleman and so far so good. I will definatly have my listening ears on. Thank you to all of you for all your helpful and knowledgeable input! You've been great! I know where to go when I have any other questions (and I'm sure there will be more) in the future.

stirmantrees

thanks for letting us be apart of your trees

Eric Frei

Thinning vs reduction seems the debate.

When do you do which? Or do you do both?

Depends on the tree and circumstances I say.

Many of our eucalypts here are very open canopied. The wind already gets in there BIG TIME.

Many of the branches are already self lions tailed (yeah, they're just like that) so thinning is the method best deployed and also, if you did want to reduce (often called drop crotching) the branch you reduce to is as long as the one you are cutting off! A no win. So thinning the canopy is the go.

From http://www.treeworld.info/f8/ekkas-p....html#post9544



Some trees here are different too, very full canopied and wind goes around and over the trees. Open up holes in the canopy of that and you'll get more destruction and likelihood of upheaval. So reduction would be the best method.

There's also a term used called "Crown Cleaning". That means inside the tree you cut out all the DDDD. On some trees when you do that it may look like lions tailing but it's not the case. Here a tree that would appear to look like you lions tailed it when you crown clean it would be a Leopard tree. But in many cases most hacks just top them .... in fact I got asked just this weekend to top one in half and I walked away.

Just remember that in most cases trees will replace the pruned foliage within 3 to 5 years, so select wisely to begin with.

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