Limbs with included bark do not need to be cut off

[Treeman14]

Maybe I missed it, but has anyone mentioned the pressure exerted by codominant stems as they increase in girth. I believe this contributes to failures as much as the leverage and angle of attachment.

As for scribing the included bark, if that's what you are doing, I tend to be wary of any treatment that breaks the natural protection zones. I might add that this is the first time I've heard of this. I've been using the "Gilman method" of long-term subordination to try to form a collar.

Seems to me it would only work on strong compartmentalizers and may lead to decay, excess callous, etc. Remember drain tubes for slime flux and cavities?

 

[Bob Wulkowicz]

Originally posted by Mike Maas

Bob's drawings are thought provoking, to say the least.

All I'm doing is putting two contradictory pronouncements on the same page for the viewers. I'm writing a larger answer for this thread right now, but I wanted to pop back in because we easily tolerate contradictions if the actual moments are far enough apart; and we must finally face them if they're held alongside each other without our having any escape.

Which is right? The arborist's law, or the engineer's law?

<hr>


He should have included a third possibility which would be limbs with attachment angles that face downward like those on an old Norway Spruce, or the limbs on the lower half of a Pin Oak. These puppies never break off.


An excellent consideration, but quite not for me at this moment.



The implication is that limbs with narrow crotch angles are more upright and therefore put less pressure on that attachment point to the tree. This is true in many cases,


An engineer might say it is true in <u>all</u> static cases--therefore, a sensible topic for further discussion.


...in addition to this, the weak attachment would allow more movement at that point, and this would cause slowed growth of the limb and comparatively more wood to be added at the point it is flexing. The tree would compensate for the problem on it's own.

I might argue about the first issue of movement and slowed growth, but you are on target about a tree's abilities to compensate--most of them are very subtle and smart.




This sounds good on paper,


Paper and trees are made out of wood, so if it's good on paper, it's only a skip to a good explanation on wood


... but why is it that included bark is the most common failure we see?

It isn't. It is however, the one that we most talk about and go after on a pre-emptive basis. Perhaps, we talk about every one we remove as if it were always to be a future problem. Apples and oranges as statistics...


We also see decayed wood fail, and once in a great while even sound wood, but almost never a wide angled crotch with sound wood.

Sudden Limb Drop? Why? We still don't understand that...


Bob Hefalump


PS: My compliments, Mike, on the ADDING LEAVES observation in another thread. That will be a part of the new arboriculture and folks will have to catch up with some of your instincts.

 

[Bob Wulkowicz]

Originally posted by Treeman14

Maybe I missed it, but has anyone mentioned the pressure exerted by codominant stems as they increase in girth. I believe this contributes to failures as much as the leverage and angle of attachment.


I'm not dealing with co-domimineant cylinders in this discussion. Those are a different class of consideration--and I think a lot more complex in finding out practical answers for some perceived problems there.



As for scribing the included bark, if that's what you are doing, I tend to be wary of any treatment that breaks the natural protection zones. I might add that this is the first time I've heard of this. I've been using the "Gilman method" of long-term subordination to try to form a collar.



I do not "scribe bark", as might be thought of in "scribing damaged bark back to sound, well-attached bark" when we fix a tree hit by a car. Think of my work as microsurgery; I make minimum intrusions, with minimum damage, and have minimum exposure to outside parhogens.

Also, please note that protection zones are almost always the result of injury and damage. I'm usually not cutting through any extisting ones if I'm out to correct included bark.



Seems to me it would only work on strong compartmentalizers and may lead to decay, excess callous, etc. Remember drain tubes for slime flux and cavities?

So far it's pretty universal and works on most species, up and down whatever range you'd like. (This is not to say I'm offering any magic bullet, just an alternative non-destructive technique that came to mind by seeing trees differently.)

If I do a good job, a few days or weeks later the tree has re-established its cambial sheet and is leaving the embedded (included) defect behind. If I missed some things in my microsurgery, the trees takes care of it later--on tree time--and I still don't have to come back except to verify the technique has taken hold..


Drain tubes, or any apparent need for them, are not part of this technique...


Thanks, and keep asking good, tough questions to be clarified...


Bob Wulkowicz

 

[Treeman14]

OK, I guess I'm a little slow (my brain works in tree time), what exactly are you doing and how do you re-establish the cambial sheet?

BTW, Bob, I find your writing style excessively obscure, vague? Like a riddle for us to decipher. Maybe its just me. Do you have a political or legal backgroung?

 

[MasterBlaster]

BTW, Bob, I find your writing style excessively obscure, vague? Like a riddle for us to decipher. Maybe its just me. Do you have a political or legal backgroung? [/B][/QUOTE]

And all this time I thought it was my imagination!

 

[Bob Wulkowicz]

Originally posted by MasterBlaster

BTW, Bob, I find your writing style excessively obscure, vague? Like a riddle for us to decipher. Maybe its just me. Do you have a political or legal backgroung?

And all this time I thought it was my imagination! [/QUOTE]


Maybe obscure, vague, and riddleculous, but I is a blue collar guy, who escaped by climbing out a window in society when no one was looking.

Along the way I discovered the English language, and my ability to change things by writing and doing. That's my yob, and I hate doing Windows.

My best function and usefullness are when there has been a lack of imagination and I can stir things up.

I'm unlikely to change my writing style and writing in riddles is sometimes how I get paid for the research I do. I think making people think with a bit of effort instead of giving them pre-digested simplistic dogma and prattlings, is infinitely more healthy for the brain cells.

Of course you can disagree. but you're right to be suspicious, Master, your imagination is exactly what I'm after...



Bob Wulkowicz


And how can i get back to the story if you guys keep interrupting me.?

BTW, I am a steward who uses politics, legal shiit or whatever is necessary to make a difference. (My obligatory burn-out is planned for early 2004...)

and as I quoted in an earlier post, <i>Can't have complicated thoughts without complicated language.</i>

 

[Kneejerk Bombas]

Originally posted by Bob Wulkowicz


BTW, I am a steward...

I knew your job had something to do with airplanes. So you serve cocktails to angery travelers...

 

[John Paul Sanborn]

Nope not yet, I've only had my camera for around a year now.

Most of my work is on other peoples jobs, so i will have to try to hunt down some of the jobs.

The biggest "problem" is that the seams will not allways close together and subsequent visits are needed. I've seen a few cankers develope.

 

[M.D. Vaden]

Probably the best thing about the wide union - even with a sideways limb, is the unique fashion in which the wood layers form around each other near the branch collar area.

Its almost a natural lock.

Weight on vertical limbs may be different, but once wind sways trees, it demolishes V unions in a way that is comparable to how occillation has also demolishished bridges in wind storms.

 

[Bob Wulkowicz]

Originally posted by John Paul Sanborn
Nope not yet, I've only had my camera for around a year now.

Most of my work is on other peoples jobs, so i will have to try to hunt down some of the jobs.

The biggest "problem" is that the seams will not allways close together and subsequent visits are needed. I've seen a few cankers develope.

Oh, oh. JPS's been arguing with me for years, and now it turns out he's been doing it all along...

Flattery is the sincerest form of imitation.


Bob Wulkowicz

 

[John Paul Sanborn]

I've not been arguing against it, and I've "admitted" to doing it in the past.

I've been a counterpoint to your "pruning is bad" diatribes. I agree that the saw should not be the only tool we use and that kneejerk dogmatic methods gets in the way of common sence.

I disagree that trees in urban settings can survive to thier species maturity without proper thoughtful management.

You seem to jump in and lump all treeworkes in theith the bucket buthcers as a rhetorical tool. I feel that gets in the way of the discussion and leads to arguments.

 

[rborist1]

:Eye:

 

[TheTreeSpyder]

Holy jumpin'crabs bat-man; i try to take such a-praise-alls as stretching and making us question; i beleive that is the intent. Also, that maybe Wulkester is so used to meeting resis-stance; that he tounge in cheekedly teases at it to embrace it rather than constantly fight it.

i have long thought that (and tried to itntimate) 'dogma' curiousely shows some of it's true meaning dyslexically trans-posed...........

And now back to Wulke, the surgeon with the rusty plastic knife, how do we use this instrument, in "For Dummys" tradition?.....

Spock out,
:alien:

 

[Bob Wulkowicz]

Originally posted by John Paul Sanborn


You seem to jump in and lump all treeworkes in theith the bucket buthcers as a rhetorical tool. I feel that gets in the way of the discussion and leads to arguments.



Gee, here I was, confused about being a lumper or a lumpee. Glad you cleared it up. Who would know better than the censor/moderator about the writing habits of his charges?

Looking to verify your observation, I ran a search on this site for posts with me calling people butchers, and guess what? In all my reprehensible writing, I only said this:

<center><i>Additionally, why butcher a tree or cut it down and waste the time it's spent
in growing at the site? That's the creepy disposable society crap carried on into
innocent creatures who don't look at all to me like a tin can or a bottle.</i></center>

That was in <u>Trimming Evergreen Trees</u>, a post where I again talked about alternatives.



I appear not to be your pernicious lumper, but I had to waste my time responding to the dim bulbed RockyJ, who apparently had a rat up his ass because he stopped smoking. In another thread, the bretheren gather around, patting this poor little puppy on the head, and saying, "There, there, it'll be better."

That's fine, but I had to listen to his unsolicited diatribes about me being on drugs, when he's got the problem of addiction. Oh, it was humor? Yeah, like a guy licking an ashtray for nicotine residue has time for humor.


So, that's your conclusion? I'm the one that <i>gets in the way of the discussion and leads to arguments.</i>?

An interesting number of authors here run their engines with the spark plug out--that makes it hard to keep up any intellectual compression and power.


Rhetoric belongs to those what can spell it, With spell-checkers, everyone here ought to be an Emerson..

<hr>



I've not been arguing against it [Bob's technique], and I've "admitted" to doing it in the past.


Well, that's nice. How does it work? What do you do? Where have you written or lectured about it? I'm happy to have your contributions and independent comments.

<hr>


I've been a counterpoint to your "pruning is bad" diatribes. I agree that the saw should not be the only tool we use and that kneejerk dogmatic methods gets in the way of common sence.


I agree. Counterpoints are essential to a healthy discussion. Notice, however, the presence of the word, <u>point</u>, in your choice of services you provide me. Please stick to points, not sloppy, generalized, purposeful, misinterpretions of what I say. It's a cheap shot, and I'm sure Mario has a figure of speedh for it..


I simply say that pruning is wounding--and trees suffer from far too much pruning without thinking. Is that my basic sin; that I believe people should think?

<hr>


I disagree that trees in urban settings can survive to thier species maturity without proper thoughtful management.


Well, there we have it. I believe, in an honest overview, that trees in urban settings struggle greatly. The consequence of limbing up, pruning cycles that require a tree be pruned even if it doesn't need it, and privatizing work based on bids for pounds, guarantee the early death of urban trees.

If you add the external issues of sidewalk replacement and root rot, or a civil or traffic engineer's general distaste for accommodating trees, to mention only two; it's really a matter of planting most trees, and kissing them goodbye well ahead of their species maturity.


Somewhere in my no-longer-available writings of a few years back, is a series titled, <i>Is Urban Forestry an Oxymoron?</i>

I don't think it's a question any longer. It's here, solidly here. I'd like to fix that as a steward,,,


Coffee, tea, or me?



Bob Wulkowicz


PS: Some people would like to hear about the new ideas. I'll give Stumper's answer in the starup of another thread, where I don't have to be distracted and mutter about offering Remedial Thinking 101.

 

[John Paul Sanborn]

OK both of us are poor typer/spellers.
<hr>
What I do that sounds similar to what you speak of is to take a seam in an included union, and "scribe" lightly along the opposing edges. Enough so that the wounding will stimulate woundwood production that usualy will "graft" the sections of tissue together.

I've done it on girdling roots that we too big to sever. The five or so years I've been doing this has been too short in tree time to say that there has been any real effect to the long team survival of the tree, but it seems worth a try. I think I showed a few of these to Tom Dunlap when i was at Milwaukee contry club 2 years ago. That was when he told me that you had been doing something similar.

I stsarted with included crotches that could not be removed, maybe som subordination cuts were made. Then I would take the end tooth of My saw and scratch the bark. Was not satisfied with the results, so I started to use a knife took a knife.

Since I don't get a chance to visit the same trees regularly anymore I don't do it as much any more.
<hr>

Cheap shots? hmmm, and your not prone to them? Aint that sorta how we got going here? I only resort to them when I get tired of seeing them from others. Pot's and kettles Bobbie.

Though in this case I think you may have misinterpreted my usage, and took umbrage where I was not giving it yet

Yup, pruning is wounding. Some people in the industry do over prune too. You just paint with a broad brush, and I still say that detracts from the discussion.

Many city foresters are putting out bid specs these days that require.

Maybe the problem is your over exposure to big city forestry done by unions workers that cannot self police the ranks. I know many dedicated arborists in cit and county positions that bemoan having to keep certain people, many who get promoted to supervisory positions, who do not care about the trees. They want to get the work dome fast and get their break time in.

The biggest problem with UF is that is not concerned with The Tree, or even with a group of trees. The single tree comes into play only when it gains some other value due to history or location (or does the latter usually beget the former?)

Most of us here are not UF professionals. We don't guage our work by our brush piles.

I've talked about the spectrum of the industry before. On one end you have the tree advocate, on the other you have the professional property manager. Who will do whatever the client wants, within his understanding of current science. I'm a mix of the two, since I do beleive in property rights but I do have advocacy tendancies.

I don't think i'd want you, but I would be glad to by you a cup'a if ever we should meet.

 

[TheTreeSpyder]

Dang, i was dreaming of a thread that would have more inter- related depth and value to arborist than psych students!

 

[Bob Wulkowicz]

Originally posted by TheTreeSpyder

Dang, i was dreaming of a thread that would have more inter- related depth and value to arborist than psych students!

Just pissing contests, measured in bytes instead of inches. Nothing more.

I'll answer you and Stumper--and anyone interested-- in a different thread.




Bob Eulkowicz