How to prune.

ozinus

Just another little thread I thought I would throw out there. No pictures inclusive with this one but feel free to add your own.
I personally have a little problem with the usage of the word pruning. It seems to mean so many things. What in your definition is pruning and where is it needed??

newguy18

thought you said in chat you knew how to prune?

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old schooler

ozinus

I'm looking for answers from others not what I hold true for myself.

newguy18

alright then i'll bite.i know topping is bad.stick with crown thinning.make sure to cut just outside the collar if ones present any other time just outside the bbr.oh and don't remove more than 25 percent of the canopy.[unless its a fruit tree in a production orchard.]

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TreeDimensional

To me pruning is the alteration of a tree or shrub by selectivley removing tissue. The way I start is to remove dead, diseased, damaged, crossing and competing limbs first. Once this is done, I re-assess the crown and determine if the tree could or should have anything else done at that time. If more limbs can be cut, we remove the ones which pose a threat of becoming a structural issues (ie. poor angle of attachment or poor taper) Unless there are issues of safety(ie, inhibiting a view at an intersection, or pose a threat of failure). I believe the last objective should be athetics, why would anyone want to leave a stressed, pretty tree behind.

This is only my opinion, and I could have gone on a lot more. I guess I should have stopped after the first sentence. Grill me if you will.

The issue of pruning varies not only in each coutry, but in each geographic location around the world.

newguy18

personally if it doesn't have targets around it i recomend they be left alone.i did that witn a live oak a friend of mine asked me about.it is in his wood line and has limbs growing on the ground and in my opinion looks good and should be left alone.oh oz i'm still waiting.

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dannyboysfc

Well there are different reasons for pruning, and different types of pruning. Removing large hazardous or dead limbs, corrective pruning for trees that have been hacked in the past, pruning to develop good structure, thinning and endweight reduction to keep trees from growing out of controll and blowing over or breaking in wind and storms, asthetic pruning to keep trees looking good, and more, plus any combination of these.

Heres a tree that I did, it was hacked(all main branches chopped of to stubs in the past) I cleaned out all dead wood, reduced endweight on heavy branches, thinned the canopy to allow the wind to pass through without blowing the tree over or breaking branches, removed crossing or competing leaders and branches etc.... complete prune really, the customer lost one just like it to the wind last year so he wanted to do something to help this one. I actually talked him out of topping it agian and he ended up really happy with the look and said it did great in the 60 mph+ winds we had recently.

before:
http://i8.???????????.com/albums/a23...c/DSC00241.jpg

After
http://i8.???????????.com/albums/a23...c/DSC00244.jpg

newguy18

real good job you did danny.

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Eric Frei

Danny, looks like they filled the base up, those blocks etc are above original grade ... not good.

There's no trunk flare.

and, what sort of tree is it?

Also, why do they bath outside?

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dannyboysfc

Don't know what to say bout the bathtub out front.

As far as the blocks and trunk flare, that was the first thing that I noticed and discussed with the client. We will be doing something about that, its next on the list.

I don't know what kinda tree it is other than it seems to me to be a euc, couldnt tell you which one.

Sean Freeman

Danny, why did you take so much live foliage off from inside the structure of the canopy?

dannyboysfc

Nothin but dead wood in there! It actually looks thinner from that angle than it really is.

Sean Freeman

Okay, you were actually there I was not, and yes pics can be deceptive with angles etc... Lot of live looking foliage on the ground though

I take on board what you originally wrote about the concern that your client had about a previous failure, and you not wanting them to top this tree.

My 2cents........you're on a hiding to nothing with the existing multi-stemmed strucutre of the tree that almost braided effect those codominants have created and the continual competition for light and apical dominance makes it a complicated example. (It looks like regrowth to me from a stump that is buried in that raised bed) Removing crossing and rubbing branches (where they have been significantly compromised) would certainly have taken a fair chunk out of the tree's live canopy.

Just as with any pruning that envolves codominance if you can, reduce rather than remove.

When it comes to reducing the sail or wind loading effect on the canopy it pays to recognise that very small reductions in height make a big deal of difference in loading.

Eucs all most all have a growth pattern in their foliage that is very end heavy, even trees that have not been pruned ever can and do look lions tailed...it makes any kind of pruning of trees older than juvenile age class something of a headache!

Personally I'm not convinced that opening the internal canopy results in better resiliance to storm events, what I personally believe is that you can expose limbs and branches to angles of wind loading they have never been accustomed to and that can lead to failures in itself....rather like edge exposure in forest stands after clear felling.

If there are concerns by clients about limb and branch failures, yet there are no visual indicators then I would be trying to argue for improvement of the health and vigour of the tree...look to the soil and roots...in the case of your pic there are some problems there that I think you are well aware of.

With pruning I feel its nearly always about dose, and this is intimately linked to the species/age/health/vigour/environment/target so on....

For me Danny you took too much off, but outside of the deadwood and weakened crossing branches the real problems for this tree are in the ground.

dannyboysfc

Thank you for your input Sean

The tree was pretty much a mess, as I said before it had been topped previously and had anywhere from 3-6 codominant leaders coming from each old topping cut. I had to reduce these in order for the tree to have strong branch attatchments in the future that may be why you see so much brush on the ground and it looks so thin inside.

Like I said the root issue with that raised bed around the base of the tree will be taken care of.

I will be taking on this tree from now on, next year will be light endweight reduction and cleaning out deadwood and mabey real light structural pruning.

ozinus

I was hoping these questions would have been fielded from a lot more places and It certainly wasn't a trap,..... Danny boy,... however you seem to have been caught in it for scrutiny at least anyway.... Never fear it is a good thing is it not.
By all accounts the tree does look nice. It is however Lions tailed. This can be justified by photos through whatever means but at the end of the day the initial amount of foliage was apparent.It is not a bad thing please don't dishearten.... I only ask you to scrutinize your own work and if you are happy how may I condemn.... The tree has issues to which you have eluded.
My thoughts would be pruning is not the first course of action this may only place an already stressed tree unit into a further stressful situation. I am thinking that people are wanting clarification by a bracket and a name but stuff 'em .. Next ...ya know stuff it I think you are capable of seeing all of the things here... a far better thing would be for you to explain why you did what you did and see if you change your mind along the way... OR NOT.

dannyboysfc

I did not lion tail the tree, Corrective pruning was needed. Tree not stressed at all, quite contrary it is very vigorous. We already established the fact that something needs to be done at the root flare and was already on my mind before this thread started. Anyway, this thread is about pruning, right.

Heres another shot, you can see that the tree was pretty hollow in the center before I even started.

Eric Frei

Most pruning pics I show look like lions tailing. Very difficult to show otherwise.

Trees here naturally lions tail, the removal of internal dead wood and sucker growth can display a lions tailed tree to the outside world.

I personally find that pruning pics are the hardest to take, to show the precision of work, the angle of cuts, the differentiation between bad wood and good is seldom caught on the camera ... nor on video.

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dannyboysfc

Thanks for the defense ekka, I guarantee if yall saw the tree in person it looks good. not just asthetically but will have improved structure in the future as well.

TreeDimensional

Another thing to consider is the fact that dannyboysfc may have been working with ground person with limited tree knowledge, or even no ground person at all. It has been my experience that having another set of eyes on the ground is a valuable asset, especially when you are climbing.

My mentor instilled a thought that I consider before I prune any tree, "have a reason for making every cut". This is where the path of science and art cross. Having the ability to visualize the finished job before the cutting starts. Again the species of tree that you are working on will determine the final outcome. It can sometimes be a balancing act between what is good for the tree and what is good for the surrounding infrastructure.

Like Sean said, we were not there, and can only guess at the history of the tree and the comments made to dannyboysfc and the client. I might even venture a guess that the tree owner said "do all you can" which loosley means "I'm paying a lot of money to do this I want volume". I always try and remind myself that sometimes less is more. Communication and explanation will assist our clients in making future decisions.

Sean Freeman

Danny I just got through reading Ed Gilmans paper in the Arb & Urban Forestry Journal 34(1):20-28 "Pruning Affects Tree Movement in Hurricane Force Wind" and wanted to correct my statement about not having read anything substantive about the positive effects of thinning in this regard.

Whilst (as always) there are many limitations with the actual samples (all very young trees) there is some evidence in their work to show that yes thinning does produce in the young trees tested significant reductions in upper stem movement in high winds.

If you get a chance to read the paper do so, as it has (ofcourse!) much more info than I have just summerised and much of it will be of interest to you.

mdvaden

Maybe that means I need to go have another dialogue sometime about trees and wind buffering. Or wind resistance.

I'm tempted to take my two stacked box fans out to one of my very small Doug fir trees, and measure how far the apex moves with full canopy, then prune away the lower 1/2 of the limbs and measure again.

Pro Nemus

We've encountered many of these situations, where the canopy is so thick that there is actually considerable die-off in the canopy interior. Left uncorrected, it causes the tree to grow out in stress to maintain sufficient leaf cover (suckers, water sprouts, weakly attached fast growing limbs, etc). When you thin the canopy, it looks like you really butchered the poor thing, but really you've only opened it up enough for the world to see what the interior has looked like all along.

Danny, I think that you did a nice job given the circumstances that you outlined. It is important to thin the canopy enough to allow light and wind to enter.

I find it interesting that you mentioned coming back next year. Generally, our properly-pruned trees do not need significant maintenance for 3-5-7 years (depending on species, age, size, etc); however, correctively pruning these trees which have been left to grow unchecked for sooo long can be a process that takes the cautious Arborist 2 or 3 years to complete. It is always better to prioritize objectives, and spread out the process to avoid placing unnecessary stress on the tree.

It sounds to me like you thoughtfully developed a plan to save this tree. A lesser "professional" would have gone in and corrected every imperfection all at once, causing more problems than he was solving. Nice job.

dannyboysfc

I feel all warm and fuzzy inside now

No, really thank you for your comments Pro Nemus. I agree that a properly pruned tree shouldn't need pruning agian for around 3 years. I however will be going back in about a year, as well as every saturday from now till then too just because this tree is on a ranch where my daughters go to ride horses, I really meant that I will be keeping my eye on this tree. Possibly next year will be verry minimal or no pruning at all depending For now I need to work on the issue with the raised bed around the base of the tree.