Removing some lower limbs on a Maple tree

Goldfinger

Hi-



This is my first post here on this forum. I live in the Midwest- USA. We have a large Maple tree that has never been pruned before. It's about 10 years old and looks like a 30 foot giant bush instead of a tree. We are very active and simply never had time for pruning it properly as it should have been done years ago..

I would like to remove some of the lower limbs now since they are starting to grow through the neighbors fences. Would there be any harm in removing maybe 6 to 8 of the lower limbs at this time of the year? The biggest limb is only perhaps only 2 inch" or 5 cm at it's thickest point. This really isn't a true pruning we are talking about since it's a somewhat superficial cutting..

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Steve

Eric Frei

Small dia cuts that are done correctly should be OK, do not cut collars off.

As long as total foliage removed is no more than say 20% of the tree I see no issue.

__________________

Goldfinger

Ekka-


Thanks for the reply. Forgive my ignorance but what is a "collar"?

I have no plans to cut anything over 7.5 cm in dia. Perhaps only six or seven limbs will be cut and most of them are small. Only one is about 7cm in dia. The rest are smaller

Thanks again,

Steve

Eric Frei

Pruning cuts - collar, collarless and co-dominant

Australian Standards of Pruning AS4373 2006 draft

__________________

TreeSpecialist

Another great resource fo you comes form the ISA.

Check out Trees Are Good.

Go to:

Trees Are Good - Tree Care Information

for more information about branch collars.

__________________