Originally posted by Mike Maas
He has also been a long standing advocate of crown reduction, even on perfectly flawless trees.
Nope, never reduced a branch without a defect. The notion that there is a "perfectly flawless" tree shows the defect in your argument and the bias in your thinking; there is no such thing as a perfectly flawless anything.
Like you I love standing before a magnificent specimen and telling the client there is no reason to have it pruned. But yes I do look closely and consider the future and on some trees if shortening a branch may avoid an event that may hurt tree or person yes I do make a cut out near the tip.
his new type of topping (done with heading cuts at nodes) will have to be renamed, although the goal and appearance will remain the same.
Way off, again. THe trees in the article were all topped by Mother Nature before I got there. Look again at the picture on page 10. Where would you have made the cuts on the 2 broken central leaders? Nowhere, because the tree is "flawless"? Dropcrotch to a substantial lateral, like the dumbed-down FEMA rules would have it? Or just "remove and replace" soon as lopa and erik talk about? Cmon, use the wisdom under that grey hair and tell us.
Arborists facilitate the coexistence of trees and people. That means it's our job to keep the trees existing, to help them last as long as possible, not just leave them alone until they get removed.
Nathan yes reduction to mitigate a defect is like subordination; often it IS subordination. Overall crown reductionto make a tree smaller is rarely justified; every cut needs a good reason. I do advocate selective branch reduction **per ANSI** but Maas keeps hearing that as whole tree reduction. Way off.
Sometimes these longer branches are broken because they are exposed to wind or snow. But sometimes, it's the short limbs that break.
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