Elm Tree

[nogas442]

I have a mature Am. Elm about 100 years old. It doesn't seem to have very many leaves on it at all this year. I had it trimmed last year. Last year it was full and did not show any problems. This year I got ALOT of seeds and very little leaf. Help.

 

[nogas442]

New pic of tree

see if this pic comes out better

 

[Bob Wulkowicz]

Pruning is not a <u>cure</u> for trees. What you see there is a struggle by that tree to stay alive.

The sudden production of many seeds may also herald the tree's last efforts to continue its line. These are very powerful forces for most all creatures: First, staying alive, and second, if that seems to be failing, get a few more issues of itself out there.

<IMG SRC="http://www.arboristsite.com/attachment.php?s=&postid=90897">


A lot of that tree isn't ever coming back, and I assume you or the arborist had been watchful about the tree being in decline from last year? Why did you have it trimmed? What were your instructions and expectations?

Trees give reasonably good signals of their troubles, but if the only tool we have is a saw, we think the proof of the cure is afterwards lying around on the ground beneath the creature as brush and litter.

The mystique of pruning is now so deeply embedded, that to disagree in any way, is to invite a telephone tap by Ashcroft and his wunderboys.

I'm not being personally critical, but if the world looked for clues and symptoms, trees would stand a better chance. Were you alerted to signs of Dutch Elm Disease, or did something happen at the site last year, or is this a flat out surprise?


There ought to be a campaign to keep branches on trees, and a series of justifications required to cut off limbs beyond the roundup of usual suspects.

A 100 year old friend is difficult to loose, and we're sorry. Some of the pruning cuts are from years before. Do you have other pictures?



Bob Wulkowicz

 

[mquinn]

yeah, bob.

from another forum, i posted the pictures on my server and a link - and here are my comments to the tree owner, considering the experience we are having with our elms here...

(the tree in question here is in iowa.)
http://www.missouri.edu/~quinnl/temporary/sagonelm/sagonelm.html

bill,

thanks for the pictures.

without checking the branches that don’t appear to be leafing out, i couldn’t comment on their condition. what happened to the elms around here (mid-missouri) is that the winter temperatures held on for a long time, and elms, being early to break bud probably got hit by the cold temps and storms we had after they had already begun to come out in spring. most all our elms have looked pretty pathetic. they now have to go through the process of releafing – starting from other secondary small buds that they have in reserve. this may be what your tree is doing. if you can reach some of the branches that aren’t leafing out, take a look at the remaining buds and see if they’re still alive (not dried out and still adhere to the twigs if you gently try to pop them off). if they are alive, watch for them to open and leaf out before too much longer.

we are just now getting warm weather here. a very long winter.

keep in touch about your tree. if it doesn’t leaf out within three or four weeks, let’s try to figure out what might be going on. i’ll post this and the pictures on the forum board as well.

michele

my concern about that idea is that there are some areas on the tree where the leaves came out okay. but that's happened to our elms here as well. since it's not an isolated tree in our area that this is happening to, that's my best attempt at an explanation for now.

 

[mquinn]

try the link again.

bill just sent a picture of the tree taken last year.

http://www.missouri.edu/~quinnl/temporary/sagonelm/sagonelm.html

 

[Tom Dunlap]

Up here in the Twin Cities we're seeing a HUGE elm seed crop. Many elms are so brown with seeds that they look like dead leaves. Don't worry, when the seeds drop the tree will flush out the leaves.

Another issue is that we had a pretty open early winter. This lead to very deep frost. Many trees are late in leafing out because the soil is still cold.

I live in a first tier suburb of Minneapolis. We have a 30" wide boulevard. My block has been planted with hackberry trees. At the begining of the spring my tree was looking dead. I broke a couple of twigs and found them to be green. As the other trees on the block leafed out and looked good, my tree was looking really shabby. That can't be right. The local arbo can't have his tree die I killed the grass and chip mulched my boulevard. there are a few perennials on the boulevard but now what I would call a garden. Now that all of the trees have leafed out I'm trying to figure out why mine was so late and shabby. I think that maybe the turf insulated the ground just a little differently than my chips. That's the only difference. A couple of my neighbors were giving me the jaws about how shabby I was letting the neighbor hood become with my ratty tree

Tom

 

[mquinn]

(just got more pics to put up on that link: http://www.missouri.edu/~quinnl/tem...m/sagonelm.html)

bill,

nice pictures.

the greenish stuff you're seeing on the outside of the trunk is lichens - very common, on almost all elms i've ever seen. the inner bark is the typical coloration of an american elm. (description from iowa state university extension: "The bark will always identify the American elm. It is light to dark gray, irregularly ridged and deep furrowed. If a piece of the bark is removed from the tree and broken crossways, it will be found to be built up in alternate brown and creamy white layers." http://www.extension.iastate.edu/Pages/tree/amer-elm.html)

the bark is typically kind of loose at least on the outermost layers. it looks like your pieces might be from an area that has some dead spots - unless it was hard for you to get those pieces off? what did the trunk look like underneath those pieces? was it a large area?

i do wonder, though about something - that is bob's question about pruning it. was it pruned to remove dead branches? was very much of it pruned out? did the arborist who pruned it make any comments about its condition? (bob really, really hates pruning of trees. don't you, bob? and he has his good reasons. not everybody feels that strongly about it, and he can tell you more....) was there any yellowing or wilting of the foliage on the branches that were pruned?

 

[Bob Wulkowicz]

Originally posted by mquinn


i do wonder, though about something - that is bob's question about pruning it. was it pruned to remove dead branches? was very much of it pruned out? did the arborist who pruned it make any comments about its condition? (bob really, really hates pruning of trees. don't you, bob? and he has his good reasons. not everybody feels that strongly about it, and he can tell you more....) was there any yellowing or wilting of the foliage on the branches that were pruned?

We had abput a 6 month drought here in the Chicago environs and many green devices started up, I thought, a bit prematurely, then we had a frost spell, followed by a torrential rain series. The weather noodnics here said the drought was over because they added up the rainfall and divided by the months of drought and concluded we were up to average! Put away the hoses.

Now, nature averages nothing. She goes from event to event, and her creatures live and die inside the extremes. Death vally averages 55 with nights of 30 and days of 140; how many ads do I see for the glories of DV and its average temperatures?

There are a hundred plus subtlities that kill a tree. That means that there are 100,000 sub-subtlity combinations that can lead to the same result.



I don't hate pruning--and I don't say don't prune. I hate how we prune thoughtlessly and excessively, and I do say, repeatedly, think before you prune.

We had better start understanding that our pruning practices are a clear dozen or so of the hundred that kill trees. The subtlity is how they decline and die after we leave. We don't look at that.

Trees have an evolved response system to wounding that is appropriate and successful to the types of wound they received over that hundred million year period. Our use of saws is absolutely foreign to that history. Our cuts are almost exclusively instantaneous and right outside the connections. Where in the history of trees do we find that repeated style of wounding?

Trees also operate on tree time--and we won't change that. We put a cast on someone because their broken bone won't heal until a certain time and that is bone-heal time. And bone-heal time differs from the young to the old quite dramaticly.

In the forests and stands of a million year's duration, one tree might suffer a few broken limbs over its lifetime. Today, we have buckets crawling over trees like big fiberglass beetles, taking off more limbs and leaves under various banners than any of its chitinous bedfellows .

<u>We have mechanized our concepts and interventions beyond the typical tree's general ability to keep up.</u> We are part and parcel of the decline. And this stays hidden because of the superb resiliency of trees and our very short attention span. I'm not telling anyone to stop their livlihood, just think--use some of that time that disappears when you're driving somewhere and can't remember what you've thought about for the last 15 miles.

I'm about to plop into the "Elevating trees" discussion mit photos.

Talk a bit about how microsurgery resolves problems of included bark....


Bob Wulkowicz

 

[Kneejerk Bombas]

Originally posted by Tom Dunlap

I live in a first tier suburb of Minneapolis. We have a 30" wide boulevard. My block has been planted with hackberry trees. At the begining of the spring my tree was looking dead. I broke a couple of twigs and found them to be green. As the other trees on the block leafed out and looked good, my tree was looking really shabby. That can't be right. The local arbo can't have his tree die I killed the grass and chip mulched my boulevard. there are a few perennials on the boulevard but now what I would call a garden. Now that all of the trees have leafed out I'm trying to figure out why mine was so late and shabby. I think that maybe the turf insulated the ground just a little differently than my chips. That's the only difference. A couple of my neighbors were giving me the jaws about how shabby I was letting the neighbor hood become with my ratty tree

Tom

How did you kill the grass, dump doubled label rate of Tordon on it, or remove it and 8" of soil with a D9?


Here in SE WI, many of the elms have few leaves and are loaded with seeds. They look bad. We are also seeing tatters on trees we don't usually see it on.
Not to worry though, in a month they will look fine, in spite of the trimming we put them through.