# Cutting the tops off of big softwoods



## bplust (Jan 4, 2011)

Hi all,

An old timer told me that if you cut the top off of even a big softwood, like 2+ foot diameter, (he specifically cited hemlock), and as long as you leave some branches below, it will keep growing. I want to cut the top off of a softwood and use the resultant flat as a partial support for a structure. Anyone have any experience with cutting only the top off of a tree and it remaining healthy? Any recommendations of trees that do better than others without their tops? 

Thanks,

Bryan

ps: Let me know if I posted this in the wrong forum.


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## Ed Roland (Jan 10, 2011)

You can not cut the top out of any tree @ 2' dia and it still remain healthy.
You will have to explore an alternative route for your project.


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## David (saltas) (Feb 6, 2011)

*epicormic growth*

Bad idea some trees the answer is no,no and no their are some trees that can.
These trees have strong epicormic growth. That said however they will not if they are senescent, diseased, or under insect attack. 
Understand doing it will stress the tree and make it vulnerable to disease and insect attack and shorten its life understand you are cutting of the crown of the tree, "the growing tip or dominant leader" 
While this is ok in a nursery to change the from of a e.g. "fig tree" from a tree with a dominant leader into the form of a shrub

Epicormic shoot - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


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## Ed Roland (Feb 6, 2011)

Most conifers have a limited ability to produce epicormic shoots. 
A 2+' diameter cut = decay disease.



saltas said:


> Bad idea some trees the answer is no,no and no their are some trees that can.


 
Curious, which tree species can tolerate a 2+' diameter cut? Thanks
ed


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## PineFever (Feb 6, 2011)

Had a friend who was into cb radio, he topped a ponderosa pine at 85 foot to install his cb antenna, topped her almost 30 years ago and the it's still alive.
If I remember right the height he topped her at she was 19' dia. When I asked him why a tree rather than a tower made for this purpose his reply was $$.


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## bplust (Feb 6, 2011)

Ed-

The guy I was talking to said that he has done with Hemlock specifically, and felt that it would be possible with some other softwoods.


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## Ed Roland (Feb 6, 2011)

Hey bplust,

I'm a board certified master arb and I think you will have some very serious issues making such a large cut... on any tree specie. In my minds eye I can visualize a small structure built on the flat but decay happens. The tree would essentially become a liability going forward.

This looks fairly accurate and could help explain. The Treehouse Guide - Reduce tree damage caused by tree houses
ed


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## David (saltas) (Feb 7, 2011)

*epicormic shoots*

Ed

I'm not an Arborist yet, my diploma is general horticulture and conservation and land management
Trees that are able to be pollarded or coppiced have strong epicormic growth.
Northern hemisphere trees like ash oak and beach have a long history of being pollarded

My knowledge is limited to trees like Corymbia citriodora, 
Eucalyptus pilularis, or Eucalyptus delegatensis. These trees all survive the natural loss of the crown with a 2' diameter 

zone 12b


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## Ed Roland (Feb 7, 2011)

saltas said:


> Ed
> 
> I'm not an Arborist yet, my diploma is general horticulture and conservation and land management
> Trees that are able to be pollarded or coppiced have strong epicormic growth.
> ...


 
keep up the good work. I enjoyed the classroom.

The OP asked "Anyone have any experience with cutting only the top off of a tree and it remaining healthy?"

"Survive" is quite a bit different from "healthy". I could survive for years on sugar cookies and kool aid but would I be healthy? 

If these cuts are ok for trees then we have to re-think our industry stance on topping. 
Saltas, keep this link as a great reference concerning how trees compartmentalize. 
Tree Decay An Expanded concept


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## David (saltas) (Feb 7, 2011)

*tree topping*

I agree tree topping is not just only ugly but also very bad practice for lots of reasons.

my neighbour had a tree topped and one of the two very mature mango trees removed at the same time.

on Wednesday cyclone YASI came to visit us and though we were 120 miles from the centre (cyclone was 300 miles in diameter) the wind was 90 MPH with higher gusts for 20 hours. The tree looked like seaweed washing back and forth

I will take some photos and post them tomorrow as it survived the storm much better than I thought it would

(since I no longer have to ration my fuel for the generator I have been very busy with my saw cleaning up all the broken trees in our street)


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## Ed Roland (Feb 7, 2011)

Your island has taken a beating recently. My prayers go out.

Many of my contemporaries refuse to accept the disease triangle should have the fourth dimension of time. Making it a tetrahedron?

Ironic how in the short term the topped tree most likely fared much better with less wind sail. Over time, though, this tree will succumb to disease and failure from the pruning dose (Shigo). Heading cuts create avenues of infection.

Stay safe


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## David (saltas) (Feb 8, 2011)

*re cyclone damage to trees*

Ed
I agree with your advice. all of it.
my first post said
"Understand doing it will stress the tree and make it vulnerable to disease and insect attack and shorten its life". I understand difference between survive / healthy.
I re read the OP as you suggested and looked up were they come from (zone 4 ish). 
I was curious about the OP as the tree sp. was not named, I offered a "well maybe possible" answer that did not disagree too much with your answer but on reflection given I live in a 12b zone my "some chance answer" was irrelevant
I was hoping to find out the tree sp. and learn about that tree sp. 

I seem to have gotten way of topic 

As promised I have made an album of pictures showing topping, epicormic growth,the topping was done 24 months ago, environmental situation is tropical lots of water lots of sun, mutliple flushes per year. 
This vigour leads many to believe the tree is healthy. In 24 months the tree is back to its original hight. 
The branch taper is all wrong of course and epicormic growth is not as structurally sound/strong as normal growth. 
I think that the flexiblity of the epicormic growth was a major reason it suffer so little, that the epicormic growth was immature / sapling like. The tree shows that a far amount of leaves were stripped from the branches on the exposed side. .
The mango tree to the right in the background did not appear to lose a leaf. It is 40 years old never been pruned and is typical of many other mangoes in the area even those that were highly exposed.
I have included a pic of the street scape trees, we have had months of flooding rain so many trees simply fell over.

I teach / run a community garden and do volunteer work at one of the four botanical gardens in our town
 Townsville Parks:: Palmetum ________________________________________

Thanks for your answers and prayers


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## David (saltas) (Feb 8, 2011)

sorry bad link in last post and I forgot the pictures
Palmetum
 Townsville Parks:: Palmetum ________________________________________

Yasi typical tree damage, they all fell over due to months of heavy rain






topped tree ironic short term benifit





epicormic growth on topped tree


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## Ed Roland (Feb 8, 2011)

My apologies to the OP as we have hijacked this thread! 

Saltas, I thought the trees were very recently topped. In 2 years they likely are back to the height they were. Because a tree puts on so much growth, do not assume its healthy. It did what it had to. It's paying a price.



saltas said:


> This vigour leads many to believe the tree is healthy. In 24 months the tree is back to its original hight.


 
Think of trees as big batteries. Trees store energy in living cells. The amount of energy reserves is then directly related to the amount of healthy living cells in wood and inner bark. Topping removes storage organs. 
The tree after topping has to draw on all available resources to put out photosynthetic material. The sprouts that grow back are initially very weakly attached. 
All those large cuts exposed apoplast. The symplast has chemicals in place to perform compartmentalization and wall off the cut area. The apoplast is a sitting duck for infection. I always recommend smaller reduction cuts on symplastic material when possible over large cuts.



saltas said:


> The branch taper is all wrong of course and epicormic growth is not as structurally sound/strong as normal growth.
> I think that the flexiblity of the epicormic growth was a major reason it suffer so little, that the epicormic growth was immature / sapling like.


 
Could very well be, in the words of the immortal Bob Ross "A happy accident".
I live on a small barrier island off the coast of NC so I have experience with hurricanes. I advise my clients as best I can but during wind events all bets are off!

La Niña is wicked!


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## bplust (Feb 8, 2011)

Ed Roland said:


> My apologies to the OP as we have hijacked this thread!


 
It's all good, I'm definitely learnin some stuff, which is cool. I got no problems with some discourse!


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## David (saltas) (Feb 9, 2011)

Ed

I was taught to prune the "shigo" method with the branch collar intact and the resultant wound is 105% of branch diameter instead of the conventional way witch results in a wound 135% of branch diameter (different species different percentages obviously)



> "All those large cuts exposed apoplast. The symplast has chemicals in place to perform compartmentalization and wall off the cut area. The apoplast is a sitting duck for infection"​



I found this interesting as I had not had this explained to me before.

I along with everyone else have noticed cuts producing "sap" 
I have had to do a fair amount of cut stump poisoning of Ziziphus mauritiana
http://www.dpi.qld.gov.au/documents/Biosecurity_EnvironmentalPests/IPA-Chinee-Apple-PP26.pdf 
The herbicide needs to be applied within 15 seconds or it will not work, the explanation was that the wound would be come covered in a waxy substance.

On reflection I think a better explanation was that Phloem flow would not draw the herbicide in and allow it to be translocated and that any xylem flow would dilute the herbicide with latex, resins or mucilage.

All of that had me assuming there was some amount of protective "sap" over the properly done cut while the cambium roll was forming over the wound.

Anyway I spent many hours today reading about "apoplast" and "symplast"
and anything that looked reputable about tree wounds including a comparison of wounds that concluded that larger wounds heal at a faster rate than smaller wounds i.e. the cambium roll was forming faster after tree diameter and growth rates were accounted for, it also concluded that slower growing species more completely covered the wound with a cambium roll than faster growing species that may never form a complete cambium roll. Another article about auxin gradients around wounds, might be a clue to why this happens.

From a simple risk assessment
reduce the hazard, use good hygienic cultural practices
reduce the exposure, minimise the wound size

You have convinced me topping is bad, much worse than I thought
I plead guilty to being seduced by pictures of an oak tree that is still alive after being pollarded since medieval times, truth be known it is probably the only one left out of what was once a very large grove of oak trees.

Ed do you have a link for "apoplast" and "symplast" and the chemicals involved in compartmentalization that you think I should read?
I would like to understand this more. I was happy that I understood photosynthesise better after I read the Calvin–Benson cycle a couple of times


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## Ed Roland (Feb 10, 2011)

saltas said:


> Ed do you have a link for "apoplast" and "symplast" and the chemicals involved in compartmentalization that you think I should read?
> I would like to understand this more. I was happy that I understood photosynthesise better after I read the Calvin–Benson cycle a couple of times


 
Saltas, I would continue to read everything you can get your hands on from Shigo. 
http://www.shigoandtrees.com/

This page and the content links 
http://www.na.fs.fed.us/spfo/pubs/misc/treedecay/cover.htm

"It will be very difficult to grasp the parts of the tree, without doing dissections and autopsies" 
- Keslick. So...
http://www.forestryimages.org/browse/subimages.cfm?area=154&sub=17639
and
http://www.treedictionary.com/DICT2003/shigo/AUTO.html

The Arb forums can be good sometimes but you have to separate the wheat from the chaff, so to speak. This particular forum is infested with chainsaw happy removalists!


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