Burls, Collars and Natural Targets

[treeseer]

Some of us have the idea that trees are an asset to the planet, something that shouldn't be owned by one man. Others think of trees as a commodity.
Those in the first group would most likely be democrats, those in the second, republicans. Trees are political. I can tell your political affiliation by how you talk about trees.

Ok Mike, I think trees are an asset to the earth but they are owned by the property owner. Did you guess I'm a libertarian?

If one follows the book of Genesis, holy to Christians, Muslims and Jews alike, you believe in our dominion over creation. What does dominion mean? Lordship or mastery. A lord and master can either be a steward who cares for his property so it has value to his children, or a rapist who plunders it with no heed for later generations.

It all depends on the interpretation; the devil is in the details, as they say. :angel:
Hmm, both religion and politics here--do I hear scissors being unsheathed?

" OAKS as RULE tell you where they would like to be cut" Rolla, I agree, but my cut was wrong because I did not listen to or :Eye: what the tree was telling me. clearer vison here prevailed, so I'll make a deeper cut to remove all dead tissue; pics soon.

 

[Ekka]

At least if you had cut it where I said you wouldn't have had to climb back up there to cut it again because you overlooked the 1/3 dead wood on top of the branch!

So what you are proposing is the picture beneath.

 

[treeseer]

At least if you had cut it where I said you wouldn't have had to climb back up there to cut it again because you overlooked the 1/3 dead wood on top of the branch!

Ekka, that's the beauty of the ladder! I'll be up there in a wink.

And no, I won't make the cut multiangled or with any horizontal face. It'll start just inside of the canker (dead area) and go down.

 

[Kneejerk Bombas]

Ekka's crooked line is ok with me, except it's too close! You don't want to cut into that living tissue! Move that line out about an inch.
But back to the crooked cutting, sometimes the collar grows crooked and you may want to make some different angled cuts to remove more of the dead stub.

 

[treeseer]

You don't want to cut into that living tissue!

Mike, that is usually my guideline too, but in this case the live tissue is being invaded by fungal enzymes as evidenced in the discloration that Larry so astutely pointed out.

So here we need a balance struck between "remove all dead" and "don't remove live" tissue. I'll err on the side of removing decay, and even tho it means removing uninfected tissue I will NOT leave a horizontal wound that so blatantly invites reinfection.

 

[Kneejerk Bombas]

So if you see staining from fungal enzimes, will you cut into the trunk to try to remove it all?
Now we're getting into more crazy talk...

 

[Kneejerk Bombas]

"The color of the good wood at the bottom of the pic just looked let just say "off " from what normal healthy wood would look like."

yes, that off color may be due to fungal enzymes. Great points, I'm clearer now on the need to shorten.

It helps to understand that discolored wood isn't necessarily bad. From TreeDictionary.Com:


"Protection Wood - Protection wood is wood that no longer has any living symplast cells, and has been altered to a state that is more protective than the sapwood. When wounded, sapwood has a dynamic response because of living cells. When protection wood is wounded, chemically altered substances in the cells and cell walls resist the spread of infections. Protection wood has many features that resist infection by decay-causing microorganisms. As cells age and die in some species, the cell walls and lumens are impregnated with substances that impart a protective feature to the wood. These substances are called extractives because they can be extracted from the wood by using various solvents. Discolored wood or rather, color altered wood, Wetwood, Heartwood, and False Heartwood are the four basic types of protection wood. The great difficulty with this subject is that all gradations of all four types of protection wood may be in the same trunk. It is also possible to have discolored heartwood (normal heartwood that has later been discolored) and wetwood heartwood (normal heartwood that has later become wetwood). The only way to understand these types of altered wood is to study them from longitudinal radial dissections. Central columns of "true" heartwood will be a uniform width throughout the trunk. Other types of altered wood will have an entry point such as wounds or branch stubs. Great confusion has come to this subject because only cross sections of wood have been studied, and any type of wood darker than the sapwood has been called heartwood or a type of heartwood."

In addition, the wood, some of you are proposing removing, is alive. It is storing starch for the tree, like any other living wood in the tree. The tree has spent it's money setting up its defenses out at that point where its the dead wood starts. Now you are going to cut it off and make the tree spend more setting up a second set of walls. Thats a double whammy.

 

[treeseer]

It helps to understand that discolored wood isn't necessarily bad.

Mike, I do understand that, but a horizontal wound is a major infection court, so in time pathogens may break through. Meanwhile the tree will invest more energy to deliver extractives to the interface with the decay organisms. The enemy here has a beachhead, and must be expelled. The smaller the battlefield, the better the chances for victory.

I'm sacrificing some stored starch to make a smaller wound and facilitate closure. You would have me make a much larger wound just to save some starch, which makes no sense to me if the starch is left so wide open to infection.

 

[Elmore]

No doubt in my mind where I would make the final cut in removing this limb...I concur with Ekka but then again I'm not really an arborist... heh heh...plant another tree.

 

[Ekka]

Perhaps the diagram below concurs the 2 opinions.

For a tree that size and a wound the size we are talking it's a drop in the ocean of stored energy resources. The defenses the tree has set up are being breached anyway.

I believe the amount of resources required to callus over my cut are less than than that of other cuts plus the reactive enzymes are stored at the collar and I'm sure that there's plenty left.

Also, it can't be too high up if you can reach it with a ladder. So when the customer looks at a tree I worked on they'll say Hmm that looks nice or alternatively like a wart on your face they'll look up there and think hmm ... "he reckons that's best but ?????"

So if the difference is your righteousness perhaps you need to fit into the bigger picture at times rather than live inside the lignen case of a tree cell. Had that branch have been healthy and for some strange reason such as clearance etc it had to be removed anyway I bet you would have cut it where I marked it ... and you would be confident that it would callus over no worries and look good.

By the way, we don't have Republicans or Democrats here ... we have Labor and Liberal

 

[treeseer]

plus the reactive enzymes are stored at the collar and I'm sure that there's plenty left.

Reactive enzymes? Are you talking about the "unique chemical barrier" that some writers postulate? I've never seen that identified or defined. Plus Ekka you're missing the point that the collar has grown out to where you put my red line.

I do agree with you that the amount of resources needed for closure is a key factor to consider. maas's cut would take many more times the energy to close that wound (if it ever would).

As I keep saying, I'd make the cut straight down; the branch even has drawn its own vertical target line there. How about drawing a new line next to that natural target? :angel:

when the customer looks at a tree I worked on they'll say Hmm that looks...like a wart on your face ... "he reckons that's best but ?????"

If I can't convince a client of what is right (nothing to do with righteousness) then I have not done my job. They will over time learn to love the burl as a sign of good health, and their previous ideas of what looks good fade away. Their aesthetic paradigm will shift as they understand trees better.

we don't have Republicans or Democrats here ... we have Labor and Liberal

You don't have Libertarians? What a backward country! :alien:

 

[Stumper]

You don't have Libertarians? What a backward country! :alien:

Guy, cast no aspersions-we have Mike.

 

[darkstar]

im with ekka except the cut line would be just over vertical

 

[treeseer]

Guy, cast no aspersions-we have Mike.

Justin, I wouldn't cast aspersion over what crazy folk they DO have; I'm wondering about what they DON't have.

 

[Ekka]

Righteo Treeseer,

How about you draw your own line cause I'm not sure what you're on about now .... Oh, hang on, I know, I've figured it out.

 

[a_lopa]

may as well have my 2 bobs worth.

 

[Ekka]

Nice Lopa, I'd go with that. I like it, I mean I really like it.

Looks better than some tapered multi-faceted cut performed by a diamond jeweller ... the callus growth would have to learn to solve jig-saw puzzels if some people had their ways.

 

[treeseer]

Ekka, I'll put an o in the middle.

Man I gotta go finish that cut today; you guys are driving me nuts.
And vice versa I'm sure.

 

[Kneejerk Bombas]

Red Line where I would have cut, blue lines where I guess that collar is. The red line looks shorter (less exposure) and easier for the tree to close over. You can always go back if the stub dies back and cut at the collar. Waiting allows the tree time to set up defenses again before reopening the wound.

It has been my observation that limbs that die slowly because of natural events, seem to close over better, than those limbs that are cut off.

 

[Ekka]

Treeseer's turn