? on leaving sprouts on Doug-firs

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ORclimber

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I'd like to get some feedback on how I pruned a mature Doug-fir, and what others prune mature conifers for. The tree is 36"dbh and sits in a band of mature cottonwoods and Doug firs in lawns along a river. 15% of the branches were dead(shaded out?), otherwise looked healthy. I took out the deadwood down to 1" diameter. Because there was so much deadwood I left all the sprouts coming off the trunk. Have always thinned out the sprouts(so they will hopefully grow into branches to fill holes) if not completely removed for windsail reduction(especially in the tops. Didn't think that was as much an issue in a tree that is part of a stand.

What do you all do with the sprouts on mature Doug-firs or similar conifers?

What do you all cut out or make sure your leave on mature Doug-firs or similar conifers when pruning?

Thanks,
Eric
 
Mark Tobin had been saying that when his company prunes a conifer, they A shape the trees to cut back on storm damage, and to make it possible for light to penetrate down to the lower branches.
 
I want to preface this by saying we don't have douglas firs here.
That being said, I don't think sprouts should be removed, not for the health of the tree. If you are vista pruning or trying to change the way a tree looks, then what you do is up to you, but I don't believe it will help the tree.
As a tree reaches maturity, there are fewer leaves (needles) feeding it, compared to it's total biomass. Once that ratio gets to a certain point, the tree begins to die. It will use all it's stored starchs and be unable to support all the functions it needs to. The top will die back (defensive dieback) and this may buy it some time, but marks the end is near.
Leaves grow where there are good growing conditions. To me it seems silly to cut off perfectly healthy limbs in an effort to make shaded limbs come back. This is a huge stress on the tree, removing food producing leaves, removing sugar storing limbs, opening wounds on the trunk requiring the tree to reallocate stored energy to wound closure, and then the tree will use as much of it's resources as needed to try to replace the limbs you cut off. In a few years you will need to go back up and cut off the limbs again, or you will just have the same situation.
I have heard the wind throw arguement and I don't buy into it for a second. Consider the same arguement can be made for tree topping.
 
Originally posted by Mike Maas
[B
"I have heard the wind throw arguement and I don't buy into it for a second. Consider the same arguement can be made for tree topping. [/B]
"

In December '96 we had snow followed by warm rain=saturated ground followed by 50+mph winds. Lots of big Doug-firs on houses. I have fond memories of standing on a kitchen counter bucking rounds w/ an 084 letting them fall into the kitchen, smoke alarm beeping. Don't know if pruning saved any trees in that storm. Do know that some people who had recently payed big $ for pruning had to pay more for removal of the same trees.

Removing the sprouts off a D-fir trunk is a cosmetic improvement. You can stand at the base of the tree and look waaaayyy up the trunk with them removed. But then, beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

I think pruning for light penetration has merit on some species of trees(not D-fir) for a couple reasons. One being that lots of people like their trees small. So if you do the endwork and keep the inside green you'll have something to cut back to when the time comes. Also, I've deadwooded trees that end up looking gutted. One Norfolk pine that had never been pruned looked especially bad long spindly limbs with green outside edges. Maybe if it had been thinned timely there would have been some green inside.
 
Almost certainly the dead branches are resulting from shading...what foresters call "natural pruning". Removal for cosmetics/safety is logical and imitates what the tree will do eventually as those branches rot off the bole.

If the "sprouts" you speak of are small limbs that have shown up years after the tree set "real" limbs from whorl buds as each whorl formed new, they will never grow into limbs that match the rest of the trees' structure. These are epicormic limbs that form in response to light stimulation, usually at old branch collars. Usually these will form clusters of multiple sprouts that are short, small diameter branchlets that look like mistletoe brooms. I would prune them for cosmetic reasons, but they do no harm, so you could leave them. Overall, I can't see them contributing much to the trees' photosynthetic capacity.

Don't worry too much about impacting the trees' ability to grow well with fewer limbs. Douglas fir is adapted to growing in stands that shade out lower limbs causing those limbs to die back. Lots of research has been done to evaluate how much crown reduction the species can tolerate before experiencing growth reduction. The purpose of this work is to produce clear wood in managed stands by pruning lower limbs in several "lifts" as the trees grow. The results of this research, in general terms, is that Doug fir can tolerate crown reductions that leave them with live crown of up to 1/3 total tree height before they experience "significant" growth reduction, measured in both diameter and height growth. Crown reductions to 1/2 total height showed no growth reduction. Lifts need to be incremental, say no more than 1/5 total crown at one time, to avoid sun scald to stems, and general shocking of the trees. All this information is from work in stands with tree densities of 150 to 300 trees per acre, so the sun scald issue may be more severe in open grown individuals. Remember that Doug fir in normal conditions develops a clean bole of significant proportion of total height, so a pruning that raises the crown some is not an unnatural way to manage urban/suburban specimens.
 
Thus i wish to all at once thank esp. to memory Tom, JP, Wulke a few more, MM here and before. Let alone the natural power in that Gossamer engine! This biology i never would have imagined that thru these years is that totally different potent view i got; from all the trading and things wrought. Aand especially that model that MM just expressed so well. The dynamic weight concept was already familiar; jsut not viewed to that form. That and the inbalancing, demaximizing by redistributing weight distribution to throw all kinds of variables and stuff never thought of; have been my secret cache stolen booty!

So i've addedd and blended them into my plan, but wary of extremes have secretly held a lil'moderacy. Kinda naming some bottom close stuff as the trade off for the customer's eye; teld Tom as we wrote that i thought that sometimes that the best thing a tree could do for it's own health and that of it's brethren; is to please it's caretakers and like.

But, there is more; the imagery of crowded brethren on forest floor as reflected by Burnham here. For in these woods, that i assume is optimal away from the bumbling human kind; eye see the patterns of light starvation bringing out familiar patterns, in deed perhaps factually i studied some there and try to bring them closer to homes. i see clean limbs, mostly slanting up. We speak of maximum strengths, allowing nature to choose according to miilions years of testing and tweaking. Then take something like that from the test fold of a crowded corral, then isolate; as purists trust nature to dry wounds etc. then say don't touch a thing; but haven't we already?

So still the searching novice i must now step forward from watching and ask; are trees figured to be healthier in the forest or yard? Are the wind protections, soft buffering of other branchings around the crown by brushing brethren more stabilized? Is the forest floor so much richer or other variable that shaded anemic sprouts are not necessary in the wild, but in the yard? MM do you allude that the tree in yard is compromised there and needs extra help? Or that we are trying to artificially extend life beyond design by tweaking these nature-all things?

So, ive gone with soft modesty, still evening lower skirt, cleaning lower central crotching, gracefull arcches and sweeps to complent rose tressils, follow roof lines etc. Naming them femine attributes put to the large, grow all over everyone, dead hanging branches, farting outloud othis male beast. Imaaging adding grace to it's majesty, once again naming that that balance in things, seems breathlessly right to me. But saying that is for the eye, and the rest for the tree; make my decisions favoring the tree, but sofftly to that imagery. Pictures like that you've seen guide my rigging too. So kinda refreshed in mind, all razzing aside, really appreciate Mike's picturesque model, proccedural model for reference imagery.

But what is right? i am kinda still foundering! With my rigging i can show a limbs not horizontal to the ground in woods by natural selection of constaained light, have lots less pulls on them, making stronger. In the Florida storms, Open sea all around, tropical climate (perhaps not seasoning, tempering as good of wood as harsher climates????), large lower latteral/horizontals have these severe pulls and winds etc. But not tons of leveraged snow, ice expanding in cracks (and spur divots???) i guess in trade.

Sooooooo, these and more my mentors on this topic here, where does this flow?:confused:
 
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Sounds fine to leave the sprouts if you feel it will balance the proportion of live foliage for that tree.

I remember that storm you mentioned!! Trees going over right and left.

Most of those were ones previously in a grove, now standing alone, or affected by some other changes.

Most of the old trees - unpruned, unirrigated, etc. - were still standing strong.

That's why our advice pages (concentrating on Oregon especially) at www.mdvaden.com

Warn against fertilizing
Warn against un-needed irrigation

Hope you had a good Independence day.
 

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