Sealing Wounds?

[Curtis James]

I have a few recepies of home made tonics. I think a
they're quite interesting and a lot less evasive and toxic. They'er more for prevention of fungus and what have you.
Treatment of tree wounds.
In a one quart spray bottle, mix one shot glass of antiseptic mouthwash, a few drops of liquid dish soap, and fill the remainder with water. Apply directly to wounds.
Clean up tonic.
1 cup antiseptic mouth wash
1 cup liquid dish soap
1 cup *chewing tobacco juice
* to make juice put one package of chewing tobacco in a nylon stocking to hold it together. Then steep "bag" in one gallon of boiling water like a tea bag.

use-remove all old mulch from around tree. spray entire plant top to bottom to the point of run off. apply every two weeks before seven p.m.

I have found thaat the tobacco spray helps with most aqll pests. It can be mixed stronger weeker ect. If somthing like this can help maybe the cavity filler can as well.

 

[Nickrosis]

You seem serious.

How do you know it works?

 

[xander9727]

I'm curious as well.

 

[Curtis James]

I got these from one of the classes I went to. An older gentlemen that taught a few of the classes handed them out. I held onto mine so I could try it out later. They work wonders. Some world famous gardener created these concoctions. I believe his name was Jerry Baker? I'm not sure. THey have been around for years. He has alot of house hold fertilization recipeis as well.

 

[Curtis James]

I just threw them out there. Obviously these aren't to practical on a mighty oak or any large specimen just thought it was interesting and something to consider.

 

[Tree Machine]

I know that there's a solution to this problem, whether sealing wounds to prevent cavities, or filling cavities to prevent advanced decay and hollows.

I've been pouring through the web, seeing if there's anything useful I could bring back to you, beyond that of my field observations. I keep finding similar findings on old research.

If we can keep fungus from entering the wound site at the time of wounding, or kill the fungus and fill / seal the cavity (facilitated compartmentalization), I have a feeling the tree will otherwise do fine in closing over the site, assuming the wound is a reasonable size to manage (under 10 or 12 cm or so (4-5 inches). Even this is a rough measure, and varies from specie to specie on what 'too big" a wound actually would be.

Anyway, I'm back from the web expedition and came across a lot of generally interesting stuff, but only found one real nugget of potential. I read through this site exhaustively, but only clipped out one piece for you to read. Please read the parts under the picture slowly. Absorb this introduction. This almost brought tears to my eyes.

 

[xander9727]

You're a little too emotional.

 

[Tree Machine]

Too emotional, maybe. Without a director of some sort we're flapping our arms, but we don't have wings. I'm not sure even the best of intentions are going to go far without some guidance, some structure, some foundation and some direction. I alluded earlier to 'standing on the shoulders of giants'. I just have a strong feeling we've found our giant.

It's a long shot. We've aligned ourselves as a leaderless team with a mission. Without a leader, this thread will eventually sink to the arboristsite cellar like all other threads, and there'll be a few guys out there, occasionally trying various methods, with the movement as a whole going NOWHERE.

I'm emotional about anything I truly care about. No apologies. I just have a sense that the solution will end up being so simple as to boggle our minds. Let's hope so.

 

[Stumper]

Curtis, There are many who believe that Jerry Baker is best described as "a legend in his own mind". On the other hand tobacco juice and soap are both proven insecticides. Nicotine is available as a concentrate. It is the most powerful organic insecticide available(and is SCARY lethal to insects and animals). I guess that, if nothing else Jerry Baker has proven that you can spray all sorts of things on plants without killing them. I've been asked why I haven't weighed in on this thread (after all I seem to have an opinion on everything,right?). I won't be surprised to hear of some effective sealants at some point. Actually I've read of a scientific study prior to WWII that found benefits from a Beeswax, Lanolin and turpentine mixture-but the conclusion to that study was something along these lines "While there where demonstable benefits from using the sealant, they were quite small. Yes, this is beneficial but probably not sufficiently so to justify the effort involved in application." A truly affective anti fungal/anti bacterial sealant would be nice for those large wounds that happen through accident or unavoidable severe pruning. Most of the time, when we do things right , they aren't needed. Frankly, I am still ecstatic over being able to stop using asphalt sealants 15 years ago because had science in hand to show they weren't just unnecessary but slightly harmful. Sealant application added time and effort to every single tree, ruined clothes and spotted up my glasses. Good Riddance!!!!! The nature of woody plants includes their decay in the design. We may be able to slow and inhibit that in some instances to our benefit- That will be cool, but I doubt we will ever halt it-and I don't worry too much about it. As I mentioned to sopmeone privately-In my low humidity area the only real problems stem from storms and horribly bad "care".

 

[MasterBlaster]

Hey, sealing wounds is easy!!!

 

[Stumper]

Butch, That's the way! The perfect sealing technique prior to removal.

 

[xander9727]

Nice saws!

 

[Tree Machine]

look inside...

Here's a shot of a small cavity, on its way to becoming a bigger cavity. It had been raining for a couple days and I'd been out climbing in it, making the best of the situation. I always look inside cavities, just a habit of observation. This one compelled me to go down and get the camera, as the rain was taking a break.

See the white in there? That's mycelium, or fungal hyphae, the living, active body of a fungus. Most people think of mushrooms when they hear the word 'fungus', and that is accurate, but a 'mushroom' is the reproductive part of the fungal life cycle. Most of the time in a fungus' life it spends in the mycelial stage, growing and expanding it's network and it's mass, softening and feeding on wood i.e. causing decay.

Most of the time when you look inside a cavity, you don't see the mycelium, but it's probably in there. Right on the surface, exposed to air, the surface mycelium will usually dry out, but just below the surface, where the wood is nice and moist and protected from the outside, it's probably doing quite well in it's dark, invisible world. It's a very natural process, quite fascinating, from a purely biological standpoint.

 

[Tree Machine]

Here...

 

[Stumper]

Mikey's back!

 

[NeTree]

Mike, go have a beer...

It doesn't HAVE to be credible. It can serve merely as a topic of discussion, or as a case to be disproved.

How many articles are posted here to be either proved or debunked? Think about it.

As for ants killing trees, we already have a thread for that.

 

[Tree Machine]

I guess the question to be asked, then, is, what is the mechanism by which wounds become cavities become hollows then become failed stems and trunks? How does it happen? Mike seems to think my 'lame picture', which is simply a snapshot of biology in action[QUOTE<b>... will only be about as big as the area compartmentalized by the tree.</b>[/QUOTE] Ideally, yes. But if water can get inside and hold, the rules of compartmentalization change.

The walls of compartmentatalization will surely stop any advancement shown in your lame picture.

That's pretty much a shotgun statement. I wish it were true. If it were, cavities wouldn't turn into hollows, etc.

Fungus ain't so tough

The fact remains, Fungus eats wood. Ants eat fungus, as do kajillions of organisms in the animal kingdom. It's a big, biological, interdependent network, but that's not our focus here.

Also, my intention is not to fearmonger. I can seperate the emotion from it and be scientific and objective since I have no personal motive, nothing at stake here. Do you get it, Mike? There is nothing in it for me, and I'd go as far as to say I go out of my way at personal expense to share the biology. Stirring fear would be quite counterproductive to the mission. Now contribute, or shut up.

 

[Tree Machine]

Peace

Yea, but I didn't really <i>mean</i> shut up.

Thanks for steppin aboard, Buddy. Everybody, read what Mike just wrote. It's brilliant, and it's all true. I personally am fully aligned with that.

I am also a great respector of Dr. Alex Shigo.

Now, at this time in history, we have different sealants, fungicides and an orchestra of competent tree climbing practitioners, and the internet, and THIS THREAD. It is a different time, and a different set of circumstances for <b>those who care about trees</b> to step up and take another swing at this issue. I think Dr Shigo would be proud of us, taking the initiative. Heck, shall we invite him into the thread?

 

[xander9727]

You mean we change the facts as we get more information/experience/knowledge.......sort of like learning.....what ever happened to the good old dark ages?

 

[Tree Machine]

Yea, Xander. It <i>is</i> like learning. Learning evolves, goes through stages and is an endless process.

Continuing with what Mike said..

Besides tree health and injury size, the factors that determine if decay can break CODIT walls also include: spieces, geographic location of the tree, type and location of injury, luck, and several others.

Let's talk about one of the several others, the one that I consider primary, and that would be the potential of the wound site to hold water.

I took this shot earlier today. See the snow in it? It will melt, and seep into the nooks and cracks and go only where water can go when it cooperates with the laws of gravity. Then it freezes. Then it thaws. More snow, or precipitation, gets in the cavity. Melt. Freeze. It will do this all Winter.

Do you you know what water does when it changes phase, from liquid, into solid? It <i>expands</i>. Most things in nature contract as they get colder. Water does the opposite. It expands. It gets bigger. It can exert phenomonal forces if contained, whether in a steel water pipe, or a tree cavity.

If liquid water sits in a cavity, hydrostatic forces (gravity), or the weight of the water, pushes down into the bottom of the cavity. We can do nothing about gravity. Liquid water freezes in the cavity and exerts mighty forces on the CODIT walls. There is nothing we can do about the weather and meteorology in general, nor the properties of water.

What we DO have control over is keeping water out.

See this is not technically 'decay' breaking CODIT walls. This is a natural, invisible force; not the bain of all cavities, but one possible scenario that happens in the Winter, when fungi are essentially dormant. The fungi will wake up in the Spring and possibly have new routes through the CODIT wall and are able to get past and go the deeper interior of the tree.

This scenario is speculative, based on what I know of natural forces (gravity, hydrostatic pressure, phase changes of water).

What we know about fungi and their role of decay in trees is NOT speculative. That's just plain biology.