Crotch Garden--Stay or Move?

[treeseer]

In 2 Q macrocarpa, maybe 100+ ande 200+ years old, raccoons were creating dens with their waste. Below is the garden that grew in the older tree, with the streaks of decay above and below this toilet.

 

Typically I prefer to let other vegetation in hollows remain, but in this case the forming hollow was spreading rot through the trunk that supports a crown that is over the house. Garden moved, area left exposed to dry.

 

Sometimes tree structure is worth more than biodiversity.

 

Pics 1 and 2 are the younger tree, pic 3 is the forest in the older one.

[treeseer]

bump. Why this never got a reply I can't guess; advice is seldom lacking so badly. I'm revisiting the tree again this fall. Don't mammals defecate in your cr...um, the forks in urban british trees? i have not climbed enough over there to know.

 

this tree's branches are over a newly rebuilt gentrified to the maximum house, and one frame house that is historical, at least to its owners, and a garage, fences, you name it..

 

these coons favor the same latrine so it gets quite nitrogenous I would imagine.

[silky fox]

i missed this thread first time round...lets hope the bump alerts some answers Guy:) great pictures...looking forward to the Fall

[David Humphries]

Never saw this first time around Guy.

Guess one can't take it all in (the job occasionally gets in the way you know )

 

The result of animal excrement on a tree is not something I've really ever considered at depth (although perhaps should of, as bats, birds, mamals & trees are often associated positively and negatively)

 

Interms of the crotch garden I would think that removing anything that has the ability to grow large and send jacking roots into a union or crevice, would be a good idea. Especially with such an old and morphed tree.

 

This one (Rhodo in Oak) at the beeches of Burnham was possibly guilty of pushing off the missing section.

More extreme than your case but relevant perhaps.

 

 

 

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[treeseer]

Ha yes most relevant; thanks!