Storm damamge hazard mitigation and repair.

[John Paul Sanborn]

We had many discussions the paste week or so on what is the best way to treat trees with significant canopy loss.

My first step is to mitigate th hazard by removing breakage and cutting any fractured stubs out to sound wood. Leave as much green bark with stable wood as possible so that next growing season latent buds will flush out and allow the tree to produce energy to try to recover. This includes leaving ugly ripped stubs if they can support a load of sprouts for a few years.

This is all predicated on the service doing the work being able to provide a comprehensive inspection and restoration program in the future. thin sprouting stubs, remove decay only after it has become unsound, and remove stubs only if they dieback.

Some of the responce has been vetrolic regurgitation of the dogmatic "proper pruning" without any concideration for the loss of dynamic mass.

IMO this situation requires desisions over a long perion of time to save lager mature trees.

 

[treeman82]

I really don't have any experience with storm damage, so I will just say what Mark has recommended that we do. Cut back behind the breaks, go to your first good branch coming off that limb and let that one take over. Remove dead wood and rips. That's what I have seen at some of his places, and on his slides, and it seems to work well.

 

[rwilk]

Hey guys,

I have a question along this line. I was pruning a live oak for a friend with 2 objectives. Remove dead / weak wood and thin out some of the real thick canopy. The tree has never received proper pruning in the time my friend has lived in the house (8 yrs). One: I found the tree to have about 10 large main branches with few subordinate branches off of these until the very ends. I had a very hard time not lion tailing. The tree had alot of suckers (water sprouts) which I removed. This is one dilema, the second: one large branch had broke about 8' off the main leader with no subordinate branches. There were many suckers at the end, all surface attached and weak. The branch had some decay in the end/broke piece. The branch had an 8" diameter. Because there was no branch to cut at, I removed the limb back at the main leader at the branch collar.

Ok let me have it did I make a good choice or could I do something better.

rwilk

 

[John Paul Sanborn]

Leafy twigs are not all sprouts, often they are inner canopy, which the tree relys on in hot periods which cause outer canopy to temporarily wilt.

IMO "cleaning" out all "sprouts" is a form of gutting.

I'm not familiar with live oak (Q. virginiana) so i cannot comment on them specificly, but if your climbing a large spreading oak, you can usualy find good tip cuts to make if you climb far enough. I did it on a few willow oaks (Q. phellos) in NC that were not hit too bad and I was requested to do some laod reduction.

 

[Stumper]

Rwilk, Without seeing the actual situation it is difficult to critique reasonably. I won't second guess your decision.

JPS is correct that oaks in general (and live oaks in particular ) will permit safe climbing into the smallwood/tips for selective thinning if such is deemed necessary. In my experience watersprouts can be pretty thick and wild on stubbed/broken live oaks. Fortunately, the wood is extremely strong and even watersprouts yeild few breakage problems if things can be cleaned up an the growth directed.

If anyone is wondering-No, I don't work on Live Oaks in Canon City, CO. I have worked on them in Texas and Florida. Jump in here 165 and Spydy-you guys get to work on Live oaks plenty I imagine. Treetx and Oakwilt also.

 

[Stumper]

RE: JPS original post. I like to go to a good branch on sound wood wherever possible. If you have ever seen the results of an extreme ice storm you can relate to what John is talking about-sometimes there aren't any/enough remaining branches to cut back to. "Proper" pruning assumes a new context. The issue becomes "best hope of salvage" for the tree.

 

[TREETX]

Originally posted by rwilk
Hey guys,

I I found the tree to have about 10 large main branches with few subordinate branches off of these until the very ends. I had a very hard time not lion tailing. The tree had alot of suckers (water sprouts) which I removed.
rwilk

If you already know this, excuse me.

Live oaks are a monolayered canopy if you will. They have a HEAVY deadwood load. "with few subordinate branches until the ends". That, along with a spead 2-3xheight, is what gives them that clean, sweeping look.

It is somewhat of a gut when you prune but the lion's share of that is deadwood. Fine line between lion's tailing and pruning.

The suckers should tell you a story, a story of dormant, advanticious buds. Buds that sprout when they receive X amount of sunlight. If you overprune, the suckers will tell the story. Don't take them all or they will all grow back, space a few to make branches eventhough they may be temporary until the canopy closes.

Too thin, an they suffer in our 100+ summer days when much of the tree is shut down.

The problem with storm damage (they load heavy with ice) is that in additon to training suckers on stubs, you must mitigate the sprouts that will arise on the center of the tree until the canopy closes again.


Here lies the problem, most just stip it all out, that is what the customer wants to see. You sometime have to educate them. My little diddy about the suckers usually works. Some still ask for it. Remember, we are here to manage the trees to pass them to another generation, not just so they can look "pretty" today

Inside that monolayer is a great place for ball moss to thrive
.02
Nate

 

[DDM]

All the branch damage we have here if you Properly trimmed most trees would die next summer i'd expect.

 

[Wulkowicz]

Originally posted by TREETX

<i>..... Live oaks are a monolayered canopy if you will. They have a HEAVY deadwood load. "with few subordinate branches until the ends". That, along with a spead 2-3xheight, is what gives them that clean, sweeping look.

It is somewhat of a gut when you prune but the lion's share of that is deadwood. Fine line between lion's tailing and pruning.</i>



I'm a bit confused. Are you saying that live oaks have a heavy deadwood load because there are visibly many large limbs with small amounts of foliage attached "until the ends"? And in other species, one sees more contributing branches with foliage that "feed" into the larger limb?

Or did you mean to say "deadweight" as in:

<center>dead weight or dead·weight (ddwt)
n.

1. The unrelieved weight of a heavy, motionless mass.
2. An oppressive burden or difficulty.
3. Abbr. DW The fixed weight of a structure or piece of equipment,
such as a bridge on its supports. Also called dead load. </center>

I'm not criticizing, I just get the sense there's some fuzziness between deadwood, deadweight, and that thing that's the opposite of dynamic mass.

It's also quite true about a fine line, if a tree, like a live oak, already seems to come pre-lionstailed; I do understand that part.

<hr>

Live oaks can be majestic with those heavy horizontal limbs, but I think we can't call the limbs dead wood because there's no more dead wood there than in any vertical trunk the same diameter.

Which brings me around to static and dynamic mass. but I won't get into it here.

If a tree has, by species evolution, very long distances between branches with foliage, should we be controlling sprout growth the ways you say? Or are we running a risk of shortchanging the already unusual system with those small ratios of foliage to apparently massive wood creation?

I guess I'm asking if live oaks run on relatively thin margins to begin with and where do we <u>not</u> treat them like other trees?


Bob Wulkowicz

 

[rwilk]

Thanks for the info guys. I have another live oak in the same yard to take care of. I will try to not remove as many inside suckers (foliage). As for working the very tips, I will be glad when I get better at limb walking. I'm pretty much a limb scooter. I'm getting better though, just slow.

thanks

rwilk

 

[Jumper]

If you trimmed out all the broken branches of most hardwood trees incurred during the January 1998 ice storm, you would have nothing left. Five years on many trees are still recovering, and are at the point they need a second pruning, cabling, or in some cases, removal, as it is obvious they are not going to recover. The way many grew back reminds me of a newly clipped poodle.

 

[Stumper]

Bob W., As an arborist who has worked on numerous Live Oaks in the past I think I understood Treetx's post. Live Oaks tend to carry the bulk of their foliage on the branch tips. Interior branches that have been "left behind" starve and die. A sizable Live Oak ,in many areas of its native range which have low ambient humidity, which has never been pruned is typically full of interior branches. Most of those branches are completely dead but have not decayed at all and are very slow to self-prune. Consequently when such a live oak is deadwooded a large amount of wood is removed and the interior may look somewhat gutted. Such "gutting" does not involve healthy branch removal and is not abusive. If healthy branches are removed vigorous sprouting may occur and must be managed to correct the pruning faux pas.

 

[John Paul Sanborn]

Maybe this is where my ironic argument of deadwood/shedwood actualy comes in. Honeylocaust is much the same way, with its dense canopy of small leaves it tends to shead much inner canopy, but maintains a profusion of doemnet buds on the inner branches, prune out the dead only and it looks like a raise and gut was perpetrated on the tree.

One concern I have been developing is that inso doing we are changing the mass dampening of these trees, since the have developed with this heavy load of "shedwood" within the crown. We come in a nd do the crownclean and can radicaly change the dynamics of the system. I have not seen any shear or torsion failures related to this yet.

 

[FBerkel]

To get back to the thread, I agree, JPS, that some of the more devastated trees should not always be pruned back to "proper" cuts. Hopefully, one can make the case for a return in x number of years, and put the customer on the schedule as a firm commitment. I think the arborist needs to be very careful in reading the customer, though. If he/she is of the type who never hires anyone to prune, except after storms, you may be running a huge liablility risk. Vigor and vitality enter in, along with predisposition to decay and existing decay.

You brought up the customer who requested some load reduction on a st. d. tree, and this is another example of the potential to sell the idea of future work: IMO, it is often legitimate to leave the tree alone, other than cleaning up the existing damage. (Come back, if possible, in a year or two and do the additional work). A good way to squirrel-away some future winter pruning. Kind of a long commute for you, in this case.

 

[John Paul Sanborn]

Actualy the guy I was working for suggested I come back a for future work. Allways nice to hear

I tried to push the work forward, but was as minimalistic as I could be in that situation. Only one 2 inch cut, the rest were well under an inch.

I actualy wanted to leave more ugly stuff in the tree then I was alowed to, and the primary contractor said he may have to go back and prune some stubs to get payment.

 

[FBerkel]

Darned owners and customers, if it weren't for them, proper tree work would be a breeze!

 

[John Paul Sanborn]

At least some owners tell the climbers to teke their time and do it right

Seems like all the people I've worked with this year fell in that catagory.

 

[Guy Meilleur]

Yes the contractor has had to go back and prune jagged stubs to get paid(at the asbestos place too--groan!!). His customers didn't want sprouting on jagged tips that had to be removed later, because removing regrowth defeats the purpose. They also understand that the sooner permanent branches and callus tissue start forming the better.

The contractor agrees. and climbed the trees without any anger. He had two subs trying to do the right thing, and customers who paid big so wanted the right thing. The two versions of the right thing got reconciled, belatedly, by removing jagged stubs and big tears.
"Heading cut" and "node" need better definition so everyone knows what's being discussed.

(A side note: Contractor got up to the tippy-top of one tree in 23 minutes using 2 11 mm ropes, monkey-fists and pole saws. Subs using Bigshot and all manner of gadgets took over an hour to get up same, and similar trees.)
(another side note: at no time in 2 weeks did I hear about heeding nature's call while in a tree. I am thankful for that since that subject lost its fascination for me in 3rd grade.)

 

[Joe]

Originally posted by Guy Meilleur
Yes the contractor has had to go back and prune jagged stubs to get paid(at the asbestos place too--groan!!). His customers didn't want sprouting on jagged tips that had to be removed later, because removing regrowth defeats the purpose. They also understand that the sooner permanent branches and callus tissue start forming the better.

The contractor agrees. and climbed the trees without any anger. He had two subs trying to do the right thing, and customers who paid big so wanted the right thing. The two versions of the right thing got reconciled, belatedly, by removing jagged stubs and big tears.
"Heading cut" and "node" need better definition so everyone knows what's being discussed.

You had to re-climb some trees to cut stubs? BA HA HA HA HA HA!

(A side note: Contractor got up to the tippy-top of one tree in 23 minutes using 2 11 mm ropes, monkey-fists and pole saws. Subs using Bigshot and all manner of gadgets took over an hour to get up same, and similar trees.)

I'd still recommend using a split tail climbing system. It's especially good for rope advancement. I'm sure it would have saved you yet more time climbing up. However, you do have me thinking old school with the 2 lines-quicker escape in case of hornets.

Joe

 

[Guy Meilleur]

Originally posted by Joe
You had to re-climb some trees to cut stubs? BA HA HA HA HA HA!
Joe

Joe, thanks very much for the sympathy, but these were trees someone else climbed. And the customers are very understanding of cuts made back to inactive nodes--tx, td!. They know these are different than stubs, which are not made according to node location.
Customers appreciate the effort to leave as much tree as possible instead of cutting back to branch origin. They know big wounds on trunks lead to rot, and to take too much off at a time (after the ice took so much) is bad for the tree.
Some "arborists"--foresters, really imo-- around here sell removals instead of dealing with damaged trees conservatively. Bad for the tree, bad for the customer, bad for the community.