Pruning cuts - collar, collarless and co-dominant

Underwor

Ekka,

I was just ready to bring up the subordination idea, rather than the stub to help make the point of union of the two stem clearer. It is a slow process in human time, in tree time, it is just a moment. The hard part of this business is to think like a tree. We may need to change our pace to that of the tree's. I realize that this is a hard concept to sell to clients in the high pressure business world. We may need to convince them that it is a cheap natural form of yoga, go with the flow of nature, be at one with nature. These concepts may work best with slower growing, strong compartmentalizers, which typically have long life spans, as opposed to weak compartmentalizers, that grow fast and die young.

I use Arboriculture by Harris, et.al. for my classes. The first chapter deals with the basic principles of arboriculture. The first two principles I think are the most important: "As tree development changes with time, so must tree care." "Tree care is a long term, low intensity process."

Often in our discussions, we are trying to group young trees with old trees, forest grown trees with boulevard trees. It is hard in our daily businesses to separate them as there may be several ages in the same lawn. Why are we treating one different than the other??

How many of you find that you are often treating the customer, rather than the tree?? If they only understood the complex systems that are in place, which have allowed trees to live for thousands of years with no intervention from man, WHOOPS, we may all be out of work. Perhaps we all need to be educators first and tree loppers second. This is where professionalism, the respect that goes with it, and a whole other discussion begins.

__________________
Bob Underwood, Associate Professor of Forestry
ND School of Forestry
Minot State University - Bottineau Campus
Bottineau, North Dakota

TreeCo

I certainally do!

People constantally ask for qoutes on work that is not in their best interest or the best interest of their trees.

Great discussion BTW.

TREE-SURFER

TreeCo,
I occasionally get asked by the customer to do what they want, like "just take 15foot off the top" or "Just shave a foot or so off the sides" (Only if I became a hair-dresser). I have to tell them the correct way that their particular tree needs sorting. If they insist, I just tell that I won't do it and for them to get someone else, but politely. More often than not, they come back and ask for me to do what I think. "The customer is always right!" , yeh, right.

__________________

The Aerial Arborist
Isle of Man Tree Surgeon| All Aspects of Tree Work
What experts say about TOPPING

Sean Freeman

My approach is to gently lead them in the right direction, always use the line what are your expectations from the tree, what is it you want from this tree. If they come back with no leaves on the roof/ in the pool/ on the driveway well then its probably going to be a short visit.

We get fewer and fewer clients like that because I suppose the word on Steve's business is that we're Arborists and we won't cut a tree in half....We walk away from a lot of jobs, and its always dissapointing to go past a place where you spent 30-45 mins explaining the options for a tree only to see it totally lopped 3/4months later.

But thats the drawback in the domestic market, in general, the home owner believes there are no standards that they have to adhere to (in fact there are lots of them) they want the cheapest price for the most work, and so long as nothing goes wrong they believe their experience backs up their view. For the people who call us out only to insist that their tree must be lopped we'll tell them they'd be better putting their cash in a pile and setting fire to it they'd get more productive result than from the lopping.

SF

Eric Frei

This is a great thread, I love it.

So true, tree time and a little bit at a time is best, I only have a handful of good customers to whom I return frequently to care for their trees. In some cases it even involves treatments other than chainsaws.

Now back to the nitty gritty (yes, I like the nitty gritty) stub then target cut 1 year later vs immediate target cut.

I threw the challenge up, lets nut it out.

__________________

a_lopa

Its great being a shrink to your clients,a social worker to employees and cut trees!

__________________

Drouin Tree Services and Excavator Hire | Excavator Hire - Drouin and SE Gippsland

Underwor

I posted the following yesterday, but it seems to have gotten lost in the Pacific somewhere on the way across.

This information came from a site at Purdue University. I will enclose the link to the page at the bottom. There are two parts to it, one addressing rays and other parenchyma cells in the heartwood and the part the play in rot resistance, the second deals with some information on parenchyma cells in general. Hope it helps.

"Often, the wood in is a lighter color toward the outside and darker in the center. These two areas of xylem are the sapwood and heartwood. The sapwood is the physiologically active portion of the xylem, where tracheids and vessels are used for conduction of water and dissolved nutrients, and the parenchyma cells are alive and function in carbohydrate storage. The heart-wood is nonfunctional and even the parenchyma cells are dead. They may have died because they were buried by accumulating layers of oxygen-limiting xylem. It is more likely that they died because the tree used these cells as a dump site for its own toxic waste - tannins and phenols. The heartwood is particularly decay-resistant because of the accumulation of these compounds, which account for its darker color too."

"The fourth type of xylem cell is the parenchyma, an undifferentiated cell that remains alive in the xylem for several years. These cells are scattered in the xylem and constitute the vascular rays, which provide a pathway for lateral movement across the xylem. Like the other parenchyma cells in the xylem, they the storage sites for carbohydrates essential for the vitality and growth of trees. These living parenchyma cells allow the tree to respond to wounds. The callus that forms around the edges of a wound on the trunk or a pruned branch arises from the totipotent parenchyma cells in the xylem. Parenchyma cells at the bottom of a stem cutting begin to divide and form roots whereas those at the upper end of the cut-ting develop into shoots."
http://www.fnr.purdue.edu/inwood/pas...ees%20grow.htm

__________________
Bob Underwood, Associate Professor of Forestry
ND School of Forestry
Minot State University - Bottineau Campus
Bottineau, North Dakota

Underwor

Here is a link that talks about the possible sequence of events that makes leaving a stub or prewounding something to be considered. It is by Bob Wulkowicz, for those of you who have been on these sites long enough to remember him. He is from Chicago/Nova Scotia now-a-days.

http://165.234.175.12/photos/Arbor/codit-range1.gif

__________________
Bob Underwood, Associate Professor of Forestry
ND School of Forestry
Minot State University - Bottineau Campus
Bottineau, North Dakota

Sean Freeman

Nice post Bob

Bob Wulkowicz forces you to think about trees from a slightly different position than you have in the past and in doing so (I find at least) stimulates thoughts and ideas that you may never have considered before, here's an old link to a site but I think its still good. http://users.rcn.com/bobw.enteract/article1.html

Sean Freeman

Treelore

Hey guys, Just been reading through this thread and I know it's been dead for a while but I have some questions to raise... In as far as I understand tree biology, is it quantifiable that the energy the tree needs to use to lay new tissue over the "stub" that you have been talking about leaving, is equal to the stored energy that will be extracted from the limb in question. To keep things light I will explain myself simply..Is it not fair to assume that the tree upon wounding will react with all necessary chemicals at the time of that wounding to occlude itself and resist infection. Should a stub be left for the "preparation" of the tree to be wounded?? Perhaps if assays could be taken in some non invasive way to ascertain the level of carbohydrates within a branch and then match that with the level of energy required to grow living tissue over a internodal cut it may make sense. I just can't get my head around why you would make a tree work several times for the same ultimate goal. Coupled with the fact that leaving a stub definitely increases the chance of pathogens invading the stem whereas a correct cut although not a guarantee definitely reduces the chance of an infestation by using the trees natural defenses.
I also find it interesting that noone has referred to Apoplast and Symplast in their description of dynamic/static ratios??

Underwor

I think we are aiming at making the tree work only once to initiate the process of compartmentalization of the wound. We are just triggering it from further away, so that we can see a clear branch collar at the time of final pruning. It may also allow the compartment time to set up stronger defenses before the potential pathogens have a chance to interact with it directly. By greatly reducing the energy coming in from the branch, we may also limit the amount of carbohydrates available for the pathogen to feed on in its assault on the branch union. This is one reason that is given to do sanitation cuttings, to remove the big sugar stick that the pathogen may feed on as it tries to work its way past the compartmentalization at the union.

Is this close to what you were asking?

__________________
Bob Underwood, Associate Professor of Forestry
ND School of Forestry
Minot State University - Bottineau Campus
Bottineau, North Dakota

Treelore

I understand perfectly what the aim of this is intended for. I am just not attracted to words like may and might when it comes to treecare and natural target pruning. What lengths of stub are you looking at leaving in this practice and why would the branch begin to close this stem down??? It has been my experience that these branches that are "lopped" unless conifers, are by and large going to remain alive and grow new foliage not start shutting down and compartmentalizing the stem?? The way I see it in most cases this would simply become a sink and place the tree under unnecessary stress, or am I missing something. Have thoroughly enjoyed all the postings on this thread though, a wealth of knowledge

Eric Frei

I like it to, I target cut all the time and the argument was a few posts back about the stub then return ... but I'm not sold either.

__________________

Eric Frei

I have also amended the generic ole pic that's kicking around for years and years of the snap cut on limbs.



I find that if the second cut is further outward of the first cut then there's more likelihood of the saw catching and going with the cut off piece. If using a pole saw from the ground then it's even worse and you'll most likely ride the piece to the ground with the pole saw and bend the blade.

If it's a motorised pole saw like the HT75 Stihl then you can bend the bar, derail the chain etc.

I find making the cut slightly back or even near directly on top of the first cut is the best.

__________________

treeseer

excellent point.

vitex42

Here goes nothing. In this erudite company I run the risk of making my name arse, scientifically speaking! I am still chewing on undigested tree physiology (at least it's high in fibre) and feeling rather ill-educated.

My observation (unscientific) is that callus formation on large limbs is often suppressed or absent. This is also very species-specific. A NZ example is Pohutukawa (Metrosideros excelsa) which calluses great guns on small branches but hardly at all on scaffolds. There could be a number of physiological reasons that I stole from other authors:

1) bigger limbs are harder to callus over because there's more to do, so the energy has to be spread thinner = less callus).
2) bigger limbs rely on decay-resistant xylem more than on callus formation for defence.
3) trees do not expect large limbs to fail, physiologically-speaking (no one expects the Spanish inquisition) and thus do not make allowance for it.

I suppose the conventional wisdom I can extract from the discussion is that it's bad to cut large limbs because this compromises trees more than cutting small limbs. Likewise big cuts rather than small cuts. In simple terms, more tree lost = bad, less tree lost = good. Less work to do, less wound surface to callus over, less resources lost.

I suppose because I'm intellectually lazy that I want a reductionist approach to tree pruning - i.e. only advocate what works.

This is an amazing thread, with much provocative stuff to think about!

Galbee

here is a co dominant and others that were cut in 2004 on a sycamore outside my house by local auth, i have been watching them carefully each year and i think this is a good example of cutting into the bbr. The bbr was cut into at the bottom on some and stumps have been left on some of the smaller ones, this tree has expanded its girth by 10%in the last three years due to wet warm weather and longer growing seasons,

Attached Thumbnails

   

JohN Dee

I don't think there is a BBR on the bottom of a branch

But from those photos it looks like they've actually cut into the branch collar on the bottom, resulting in a lessened growth response from the tree at that particular point.

__________________
We are what we repeatedly do... Excellence then, is not an act, but HABIT...

Red : Green : Blue

Eric Frei

Just having a closer look at this picture.

I would say stubs were left here.

This is a great opportunity as an arborist when you are working on a tree. You can see previous cuts and see the growth around them, that then gives you an indication of how to cut the next. Always observe that.

Galbee, could you take some pics of similar branches around the tree that have not been cut so we can see the types of unions they might have been rather than guessing.

Attached Thumbnails

 

__________________

Galbee

my appologies branch collar is what i meant it was late last night when i posted.
yes they cut pretty much straight down on the co dominant and left little stubs on the smaller ones as ekka pointed out.
it was just interesting that the growth on the bottom where they cut the collar hasnt grown properly and shows that a correct cut is essential. too short poor compartmentalisation, too long stump die back unable to compartmentalise.
Ekka you were spot on those were the stubs that were left, the top one was nicked underneath dont know why? weilding the saw like a sword probably hence the bottom die back.
more photos later of the limb unions that are left.

Galbee

Ok here are the crown shots.

Attached Thumbnails

   

Eric Frei

Is that normal?

Like is that how those trees grow?

It' like the whole bloody thing is some pollard head. Like imagine what it would have looked like with no branches cut off.

I can see why there was little stubs left then, this is a good case in fact for knowing where to cut.

There's no collars and the BBR is a jungle.

__________________

Galbee

No thats not normal.
they normally grow straight with a good rounded canopy.
local company working for the council pruned it early then again four years ago, thats why i thought it would be a good teaching tool on how not to do it.
you can see how bad cuts effect a tree, this was their attempt at a crown raise i think. as the tree has grown it has become unbalanced.(and twenty types of ugly)

unfortunately this is common place over here people are taught the best way to cut and prune but somewhere along the way they either get lazy or forget the basic rules.

IanUk

I'd say it was a nasty cut too. Plenty of thoses around where i work.

willem

Hello Ekka and all others on this thread,

The company I work for has done a lot of experiments with leaving stubs on trees. The goal was protection of the heartwood by letting the branch do the compartimentalisation. The stumb had to be big enough to keep on living and there had to be some distance between the cut and the heartwood. Most of the stumbs were 1 meter(3 feet)>. The experiments were very succesfull on the species Aesculus hippocastanium. Complete protection of the heartwood.
We tried this method in our day to day pruning but our clients (mostley local goverments) were very sceptic on leaving those stumbs.
Now we are more careful with leaving stumbs and only use this method when we have to remove very large limbs.
I'm aware that not every species will react in a good way and a stumb will die
anyway.
The method of leaving a stumb and cutting the rest a year later is NOT OKE!!!
When you make the first cut you have immidiate compartimentalisation, this is the first and strongest reaction of a tree against rot. The wood it occurs in is still healthy and compartimentalisationreaction is strong.
When you come back the next year and cut the rest the wood of the branch and the stem is affected by the compartimentalisationreaction and ALWAYS WEAKER than normal healthy wood. So when you make the final cut the second compartimentalisationreaction will ALWAYS BE WEAKER than the first.
So the tree isn't better of with this method.
I'll try to get some pictures of example stumb with the compartimentalisationreaction and stumbs still alive on trees we pruned.

Willem

Eric Frei

Willem,

The thread your findings and discussion needs to go to is this one.

You do have a lot of reading before posting there though, lots of PDF's, lots of "nitty gritty".

longer cuts on poor compartmentalizers| CODIT WALL4

__________________

willem

Thanks Ekka,

I'll will try to dig into it!

Knotahippie

There's a real good reason not to cut a co-dominants that I'm not sure anyone mentioned (correct me if I'm wrong...)

Check out stem anatomy, the branch pith is connected between co-domin. stems.

The branch pith is not connected between branches and stems which makes it ok to cut branches...

Cutting a co-dominant stem lets decay into the other stem...no matter what.

Ever seen a big ol' "branch" (stem) cut hollowed way into the tree? this is why.

In the long run (maybe long after were all dead) it can be a death sentance for some trees (decay, cracking, girdling wounds etc...)

Not to mention, it takes alot of tree reserves to callus.

I use the formula for polarding here, 10X STEM DIAM AT STEM BARK RIDGE/COLLAR. which would make some cuts in the ex. pics a little short...

...if a customer asks me to cut it, I might tell em' to hire someone else (monkey).

Knotahippie

Oh yeah, and just because you can't see decay from the outside dosen't mean it's not there.

Once the decay is in, it's walled off...untill the tree gets weak. Then everyone wonders what happened when the tree dies.

It's like if you got gangrene of the arm and your body just walled off the infection. years later when you get sick, you die of gangrene... but not from being sick.

MTS247

"They would flush cut, as wound closure was rapid" I think they would cut through the collar and this would result in fast wound "closure", so we cant use the rate or pattern of callus growth as an inticator of a quality cut! Agree/Disagree

(Re pic post #13)

Have we all seen a flush cut cause a large wound below the cut?
Maybe cuts made closer to the red line are a little "flush", and are causing the dieback below the cut. The tree will then start to callus over this dyeback. Is the pic in post #13 an example of the cut being to flush and causing dieback?

Or maybe the angle of the cut wouldnt have mattered, it may decayed/died back below the cut anyway.

Yet again more questions than answers