Cork Oak: Doing my first

mdvaden

Never pruned cork oak before, but will tomorrow.

These were imports from California 40 years ago.

I'm taking a guess that the cork / bark may cause a bit more friction than I'm used to with the manual saws.

Anyone else pruned many of these?

Sean Freeman

Never pruned but often admired , here's a pic from Adelaide Waite Arboretum, let us know how you go with it Mario.

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Jeff Darby

Hey Mario,
Dont forget to take pictures before and after, Good luck and becarefull. No we havent dealt with this species before.

Impressive picture Sean.

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mdvaden

Bark looks just like in that image above......

I'll bet it doesn't make for good photos. The power company stubbed 1/3 by the lines.

The other part of the tree was topped before, and it a bit unbalanced.

Visually, it may look its best from a distance right now to the untrained eye.

But I will get some pics - the bark is really cool looking.

If I get some bigger pieces, our parrots may enjoy destroying pieces of bark - although, seems that oak is bad for pet birds if I recall my list right.

Having not seen one before, I thought I was approaching Eucalyptus trees at first due to the leaf color.

Steve Tipton

Never seen one

Ace Master

Yes we have done work on them before, but use a chainsaw on them, just make shore that all your cut are to a high standed as cork oaks are very very rare and usally very old. A nice sharp handsaw will do the job fine, take some pics to show us.

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mdvaden

Okay, like I said, they are not photogenic....

Yet !! Couple of more years. Been topped once before, maybe twice on the power lined side. Both trees look better in-person than the pics indicated though. Basically, I thinned some interior bulk, shifted them away from the house and away from the lawn some to get light in. Cleared them from the power line to the house, and raised slightly to let the streetlight's light shine under one side.

This is one of them...



So, my guess was right. The cork / bark does produce friction. But the surprise was that the wood is softer like sweetgum (Liquidambar). So all-in-all, it was like cutting maple for effort: not too bad. In fact, it was a lot more fun to work on than I expected. The edges to the leaf are not very spiny, but I was concerned at the bulk at first, because the branch density was very comparable to old English holly, except that the cork oaks twigs are more flexible, and clean-up wasn't bad at all. Another suprise was how much visual improvement occured with every few cuts.

This was unlike any tree I've pruned, but was similar to characteristics of several types of trees I've pruned, all rolled into one tree.

The image below shows another first for me in business. (It's the other tree) I shaved away a lot of bark around these old cuts, so it would be easier in the next few years to see where callus tissue is coming from. I've never worked on a tree with bark thick enough at this age to hide the callus. The trunk below is a lot bigger than the image shows - the view shows it's narrow side. Not sure why the big-ass cuts were made, but the tree should do superbly as long as no more bad cutting occurs.



The fitst tree at the top, had two big limbs on the back toward the power lines that had sunburn damage on top, for about 4 linear feet on each limb. But only about a 2" wide strip right now and callusing nicely.

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