Oak limb removal

[Highland Forestry]

Just thought i'd put these up to show that we don't always use spikes on live trees !!!

 

 

I was asked to remove the two lover limbs as they were overhanging the line

 

 

Me working my way up, about to tie in another anchor point...

 

And again..

 

The end result, limbs removed.

 

Not a spike in sight, the tree looks a little unbalanced, but unfortunatley we're only alowed to carry out the work we're told to do.

[treewizard]

not every tree is a uniform shape mate, nice one looks good.

[David Humphries]

Nice work Highland.

 

Just a thought from a conservationally biased Arborist...........

 

In this instance, where aesthetics are not particular high on the agenda, It is my opinion (based upon experience and observation) that leaving a stub of a meter or so, would be an altenative to natural target prunning.

 

Can't tell from your distance shot, and I am in no way suggesting your last cut is not bang on the collar, but man can never hope to exactly replicate the closing/healing of a natural major wound ( ie; branch failure/ removal )

 

What a Tree needs is time, not perfect angles of cut.

 

How often do we see prunning wounds not callous over and lead to localised disfunction and decay.

Even with the best skill and attention the perfect cut is not always attainable, possibly due to localised adaptive growth, access etc......

 

More wood may = more chance for codit to initiate succesfully.

Not suggesting the late great Alex Shigo was barking up the wrong tree, but I think his decades of experimentation was designed specifically for the ideal urban specimen, where the above mentioned aesthetics does come in to play.

 

The best callousing I ever see is always in woodland, where branches have failed, leaving a branch stub, which enables the Trees natural time scale to adapt and develope callous tissue in the most efficient and proportional way possible.

 

 

Of course Mr & Mrs Smith living on Accacia avenue, does not want to see there lovely Tree left with unatural flush cut stubs, so this is where fracture and coronet pruning comes to the fore

 

I remember reading some research from Germany on flush cuts, stubs and target pruning back at Merrist wood 10 years ago, would love to get my hands on this again.

If anyone does know of it, I would really appreciate a nod in it's direction.

 

 

 

Just a thought..................

 

 

 

 

.

Edited February 15, 2009 by Monkey-D

[Parker]

Nice job Highland !

[Highland Forestry]

Monkeyed -

Yep, understand totally what you're on about... I imagine taking two largeish limbs off like that on this oak will cause some kind of health problems for her in the years to come, it wouldnt supprise me if the pruning cuts let some sort of disease into the tree and result in a failure later in life - I hope not but i'm sure it's likely.

 

On the tree in the picture, I was originally going to prune the limbs back to thier apex in line with the boundary fence - but I thought it would look silly and although we are not required to leave any trees in a sensible state as long as they are cleared to the boundary, I like to take a bit of pride in my work wherever I can and so decided to take the limbs right back and leave a neat job - especially as it was a third party tree and not owned by network rail.

Not sure if that's the right thing to do or not, but if you've got enough time to do a decent job you might as well.