I agree, but it stops, or helps to prevent disease & bugs does it not? Although it does nothing to promote healing it does'nt stop it. Thus protecting it till it heals. The tree I speak of is healing pretty good, though I'm not sure what the inside of the tree is like after the lightning. I used wound dressing & have'nt used it. I honestly can't see any difference in growth, but I feel it helps keep rot, fungis and bugs away. It must just be certain trees in certain areas cause I've seen all different types of trees with limbs (alot of them) blown off from storm damage & they still look good. Maybe it will take 20 yrs off the tree who knows? Her tree looks like it could lose those horizontals & be just fine. If its that bad that it cant then the whole thing should come down that way noone has to worry about it anymore. Then plant 3 or 4 new trees.
You've touched on several topics, not that the thread hasn't turned into several different arguments already, but I'd like to comment on them just the same.
Painting a fresh wound is effective in discouraging insects from being attracted to the cut. Paint does nothing to slow wood decay fungi. Back in the 70's, Dr. Alex Shigo did research that proved just that.
Here is an excellent site with lots of drawings and great information presented in a language that even non-arborists can understand:
Tree Decay, An Expanded Concept
Another great site written in "plain English" is:
Tree dictionary. com
Both these sites do a good job of explaining that trees don't heal or seal, they compartmentalize. When laymen see a tree wound heal, they only see new wood growing over the wound, they're not seeing the walls that protect the tree from decay advancement.
What you are painting is dead wood that has been abandoned by the tree. What is important is that all four walls of CODIT hold strong, not that the outside surface of abandoned wood is protected.
I strongly urge you to look at the sites above, I'm sure you will enjoy them.