Is this beyond help

[Locoweed]

Is this member of the Live Oak family beyond help?



Obviously from it's location I am not going to spend much on it, but if there is something I can to to help it survive I would appreciate knowing about it.

Thanks

 

[Stumper]

Slicing back into those ram's horns robbed some strength. If it is able to support the limbs that remain for a little while it may hang on for a LONG while. Since it is just out in the field (yes?) I suggest doing nothing.

 

[MasterBlaster]

It's days are numbered.

 

[Locoweed]

I haven't done anything to the tree yet. That is just the way it split.

If it doesn't make it, I can always use the firewood. <G>

Thanks

 

[Ekka]

Yeah there's some logical things to do which will help it's longevity.

1. Height reduce the canopy to lower wind sheer and weight on the effected area. Try to apply correct cuts to collars and co-dominant stems

2. Thin the canopy to reduce wind resistance

3. Remove some of those laterals to lower effects of torquing and splitting

Even if the tree has exceeded the 70% cavity rule you can use these options to keep the tree longer especially when there is no target in the event of failure. It could live for a very long time yet and make a great home for some critters and birds etc. Removal in this instance would be a waste.

 

[jason j ladue]

its a beaut! good thing its off by its self though. just out of curiosity, how recent is the break? i bet, if left alone, it will be living long after any of us...

 

[PTS]

If the tree isn't going to hurt anything, than it won't hurt to see what happens. I am a fan of sealling areas like that with prunning sealer. It will help to keep any additional disease out.

 

[Locoweed]

I first noticed it about 2-3 weeks ago.

A big factor in it's contuined health will probably be the weather. We get a lot of wind in March. I will try to thin out some of the canopy next week.

We are hopefully at the end of a long drought cycle. We had a lot of rain last year. Unfortunately, years that have a lot of rain are usually followed by a year of below normal rain.

We have lost quite a number of trees to the extended drought and it would be nice to have this one hang on for awhile.

Thanks for all the replys

 

[Ekka]

That's a big negative on pruning sealers, have posted in your new thread under Comercial

 

[MasterBlaster]

I am a fan of sealling areas like that with prunning sealer. It will help to keep any additional disease out.

What Ekka said!

 

[jason j ladue]

im w/mb here. how are you gonna seal THAT? let it be... i'd be careful pruning that canopy. dont cut any more off that thing. mother nature knows best.

 

[treeman82]

If you are able to climb I would suggest that you take out any major dead wood, but only dead wood.

Besides that, I would suggest that you remove any vines which might be growing around it. Possibly rip out any garbage plants / grasses below the canopy and mulch if you have access to chips / composted manure, mulch, etc.

 

[John Paul Sanborn]

A litthe rehashing on the Shigo study on wound sealers.
1. it showed that in the short term there is a noticable increase in decay behind sealers
2. after around 4-7 years the decay statistics even out, so one could say that they can acelerate decay, but CODIT will take over eventually.
3. petro-chem products were shown to damage/kill the meristem, thus slowing wound closure.

that all said there has been some recent work that shows prudent use of sealers may be effective with such things as oak wilt.

I do agree that it is counter productive in most cases and a waste of money here.

If this were my tree I would follow the course you seem to be looking at. monitor the progression of decay in the tree aand turn it into firewood when it looks like it's unstable.

Now for the "wind sail" reason for pruning, there are studies that show that thinning work allows wind into the canopy, where it would have gone around it before pruning. Thus changing the way the tree moves, and inreaseing the risk of failure untill new reaction wood can be developed.

Since this tree lost some canopy, maybe reductions would be called for, but no pruning will assure a longer usefull life of this plant.

Except for a basal prune, allowing for basal regeneration (eg- cut it down and start anew from a sprouts).

 

[treechick]

I'm kind of a fan of mycorrhizae soil injections to help water intake from the roots... boost the trees ability to take care of itself.
I'm also a fan of deadwooding only on mature trees, though I'd consider the March winds you spoke of, for sure. Maybe a wee bit o' canopy thinning / weight reduction ??? >>> Err on the side of ultra-conservative.

 

[Ekka]

Jason Paul Sanborn, where is your evidence that canopy thinning to allow the wind thru a less dense canopy is actually adverse to the fuller canopy. It is better for the wind to pass through than buffet the entire tree creating leverage against the weakest point in this instance, the trunk with a dirty great cavity. Where I live is a cyclonic subtropical environment and the thinning practice is encouraged by local govt on larger trees.

There was only one possible exception to the above and that is when a tree has a full crown to the ground, like a conifer, in that instance crown lifting to say 8' will allow the wind beneath and up inside and could weaken it's strength, but that is not the case here.

What I said on that oak is exactly what we have just finished studying. When there is an extensive cavity and the cambium walls are supporting the crown, look for signs of fibre buckling ... if not there now they will be soon, and the only solution is weight reduction via pruning when keeping the tree and making it safer.

Only a matter of 6 months ago I completed a course with Professor Dr. Klaus Mattheck, and the scenario with the oak of this thread is a typical scenario, a bunch of dudes will say "leave it" (wrong), another bunch will say "cut it down" (maybe, depends on target), and in between will be a whole lot of guff ... and that is not a consist aboricultural scientific approach ... most likely a bunch of opinions by people.

Perhaps this is the problem with threads like this, what qualifications and experience do the posters have and is their guff up to date factual and valid?

So 3 treeworkers go to this tree and quote/give advice, read the thread, what would you think if you were Mrs Ordinary?

 

[Stumper]

Ekka, John can answer about his sources for himself but there has been research into the effects of thinning. Results tend to be mixed. The degree of thinning varies depending both upon the arborist/tree hacker and the conformation of individual trees. Wind events vary in severity and impact forces and angles change due to terrain and structures as well as neighboring trees All of which means that even major storms don't necessarily stress trees in adjoining properties in the same way. One thing HAS become evident from evaluating a bunch of trees subjected to high winds. I have seen both research and observed with me own twin peepers.-Severely thinned and lionstailed trees tend to suffer more damage than unpruned trees. Wind effects on gently thinned and reduced trees are less clear. But a lot of thinning is clearly worse than none statistically.

 

[treechick]

There have been some excellent points made here, and I enjoy that because it makes me think & re-think. Ekka, you've made me think especially hard about what qualifications I might have in order to give a decent evaluation of a tree problem and it makes me want to study more & strive to do better. Thanx all for keeping me on my toes !

 

[Kneejerk Bombas]

I'd like to share my opinion of Eriks thoughts on crown reduction, with these coments from a discussion at Masterblasters site. Here it is, in part:

"... on paper they (crown reductions) may look good to some arborists, probably most. The problem is that trees are living orginisms, they are not simply wooden structures.
Sure, if you took some weight and length off the end of a branch, the tip would be lighter, and a short light branch, is less likely to fail than a long heavy branch. This is true if the branch is a beam of dead wood, but it's not.
Let's think about the differences for a moment.
A living branch develops it's size, shape and cell structure based on it's weight and movement.
Open your mind way up for a second. Wouldn't it be better to add weight and increase movement to make the limb stronger? Limb movement signals the tree to add strength.
Follow me on this now. All that stuff you're wanting to do to the root zone, is any of it going to add more sugars to the tree? No, not until it promotes more leaf growth, but you're up there cutting leaves off.
Each little scar is going to need fixing by the tree. It takes huge amounts of stored resources to compartmentalize the wounds. At the same time, the hormones that signal the tree to start these repairs, also signal insects that there is a tree in stress, "LUNCH!" The end result is often more leaf loss and possibly other insect damage to the tree.
What happens to the roots that were servicing those parts of the tree you remove? They die!
Now all this is ok because you made the limb stronger, or did you?
What will the new lighter branch do as far as anding circumference in years to come? It will abandon strengthening the wood and spend it's money (photosynthates) replacing the end you cut off. Growth will be accelerated because when you tipped it back you remove apical meristems which are the source of a hormone called Auxin. Growth at the area you cut back will be accelerated until the tips are replaced and then those new tips will signal the growth to slow back down.
The tree is not back in equalibrium though. Now the tip is bigger, because the parts you removed have grown back, and at the same time the other tips have gotten bigger. Do you remember what the cells did back along the branch? That's right, they haven't been adding strength as fast as they would have if you never did the cutting!
One other factor a dead tree, wooden swing set, or any other wood structure has that's different from a living tree, is a ratio between leaves and total biomass.
The leaves of a tree make the food the tree uses. This food is used throughout the tree all the way down to the root caps at the very smallest root end, perhaps hundreds of feet away. You see, roots don't make food.
Anyway, when a tree reaches maturity, it is in a state of very low leave to total biomass ratio. It's just balancing there. Once that ratio tips past a certain point, the spiral of death begins, and in time the tree dies.
With a young tree, you can cut the whole tree down and it might grow back. The tree in the picture might only be able to stand 15% crown loss (and it's already lost more than that).
These are just a few of the reasons I cringe when I hear crown reduction, especially on a mature tree.
In regaurd to dose, I just think a little crown reduction is bad, a moderate crown reduction is very bad, and a large crown reduction is just a staged removal.

 

[Ekka]

Hey Mike, I don't think you have addressed the deficiency in this specific tree. If what you are saying is true then why did it bust (as many do) in the first place?

Is the rate of callus wood growth going to keep up with the rate of decay?

The tree has lost a very large percentage of it's structural wood.

And if correct cuts are applied there will be no epicormic regrowth and later if there is it should be removed (rubbed off). I'm not talking about lopping it back but selectively pruning down to co-dominant stems and collars + selective thin.

You wrote "Open your mind way up for a second. Wouldn't it be better to add weight and increase movement to make the limb stronger? Limb movement signals the tree to add strength." But have a close look to the attachment point, we're talking about a cavity in the trunk (not branches) just below a bunch of leaders, do you really want more movement?

Sorry, I disagree with your theory. Many a tree left to it's own devices will fail. Cabling, propping, bracing and pruning are some methods of assisting. Afterall if you were correct why bother having arborists, they wouldn't be needed for remedial surgery, formative pruning, disease & pest erradication etc etc. There are plenty of pics on this site that show what happens to trees.

 

[Kneejerk Bombas]

My comments were obviously not written for this specific tree, but rather just my general feelings about crown reduction as an approach to strengthening a tree with a hollow.
If you look at the picture at the start of this thread that shows a close up of the hollow, you'll see that the hollow was probably caused by a past crown reduction, perhaps by a storm or other catastrophic event. Notice the opening of the cavity is at the top, facing up, and all the stems are about the same size shooting out from that one point, indicating a failed central leader.
It was not able to successfully compartmentalize the injury because it lost too many of it's "food factories" (leaves) in that event. It spent everything it had (starch reserves) to replace the lost foliage. At some time it reached a point where it was at a balance again and continued to grow normally. It was left behind with a large hollow in the main trunk, and several weakly attached limbs, one or more of which subsequently failed. An excellent example of the future of these cuts, in stressed trees.
A tree's ability to compartmentalize an injury is directly related to its health, most importantly its ability to make glucose (sugars), and to have them on hand (stored starch).
An analogy comes to mind. Think about an overweight person who goes under the knife to have his fat sucked out. This correlates to a tree that is too big, for whatever reason, and undergoes a crown reduction. Like the tree, the overweight person will undergo huge amounts of stress from the surgery. If you revisit both the tree and the patient after some time, you will see they both have returned to their original size. Neither one healthier, smaller, or in any way better off, in fact they may not have recovered from the stress of the surgery.
We all know what would be best for the overweight person, a change in diet and exercise, not surgery. The funny thing is we don't know what's best for the tree.
There are some excellent writings on the subject, by Bob Wulkowicz. It would do anybody well to read his thoughts on crown reduction and over-trimming in general. I'm sure a google search will bring up hundreds of hits.
Bob has a saying that I didn't understand when I first read it, "If all you have is a saw, all you can do is cut."
It wasn't until my understanding of tree biology, my experience in the field, and my mind opening up, all came together, that I finally got what he was saying.