Compartmentalisation of wounds

[willjones]

Why do some trees compartmentalise well and others not?,why is it that willows are poor and acacia is good?. Any help would be brilliant.cheers.

[Macca]

Willows put all their energy into growth! They grow fast, fall apart then grow again it's their survival technique! Long lived slow growing trees seem to heal better.

[sloth]

Yup, all about survival. Willow grow faster, rot, fall over and break, then the broken bits root and have a head start over seedlings of other species. Oak on the other hand won't grow new trees when it falls, so it's energy is spent being strong and protecting it's woody support system. Then it can scatter its big seed with good reserves of starch to feed the seedlings - as opposed to willow, birch, poplar etc which go for quantity over quality of seed, often spreading great distances on the wind to colonise new sites with little competition as a pioneer species. All very clever!

[KTSmith]

The goal of a tree as an individual, community, or species is to survive and spread in a competitive and sometimes hostile environment. The great diversity of tree species and life history reflects different strategies to survive and spread. All of these strategies cost metabolic energy gained from photosynthesis. As Macca and Sloth rightly say, some trees invest more in compartmentalization, some invest more in sprouting from root systems, some from seed, etc. This diversity of strategy helps the overall environment. Fast-growing and poor-compartmentalizing birch, pin-cherry, and striped-maple compete well for light and water after major site disturbance (fire, landslide, etc.), decay, die, and the decay process provides soil humus and energy to microorganisms to move essential elements around. That helps support later colonization by slower-growing, longer-lived species that are better compartmentalizers. Sorry for the North American species references, but I expect you know what I mean.

Now, don't go and put too fine a point on it. Nature doesn't exist to fit our little boxes of r-selection or K-selection, early- or late-seral colonizers, so exceptions can be found. Still, sloth is quite right, "all very clever".

I have a few articles on compartmentalization linked to:

Kevin T. Smith - Northern Research Station

[daltontrees]

Trees aren't clever!

 

Over a million years of small and large mutations, successful mutations are rewarded by making it to reproductive maturity and pass on the successful genes. Tree speciae adaptations may appear clever but they are really the result of millions and millions of unplanned trial-and-error experiments. Basic Darwinian stuff.

 

It doesn't make trees any less wonderful, but they aint clever. The fast living willow that has offspring with a genetically controlled higher dedication to would compartmentalisation are out-competed compared to their brothers and sisters that genetically put all their energy into fast growth.

 

Killjoy :-(

 

PS willows and the other fast growers are very good compartmentalisers of basal wounds, but not of branch wounds. Compare with lime which is the opposite.

[KTSmith]

Ha, ha, of course Jules is completely correct with regards to success being the result of a zillion random mutations over long periods of time.

A killjoy? Not for me. Millions of unplanned experiments? You bet. That is where the joy is, for me as an observer, anyway. That the order comes without a master plan.

 

Our forest managers in the eastern US have a real problem with native red maple, which is thin-barked and fire-intolerant replacing native oak which is (after sapling-stage, anyway) thick-barked and fire-tolerant. The last decades of fire suppression has shifted the environment so that the maple out-compete the oak in the sapling and small-pole stage of stand development. Under what we think as the natural cycles of fire occurrence, the oak hold their own and then some. So sure, investment in one strategy sometimes pays off and sometimes doesn't as the environment changes!

[john k]

Something else to consider when looking at trees' ability to compartmentalise decay is their genetics and environment. This may have as much or even more influence than the tree's species and there is a lot of variation between individuals of the same species.

[One Buck]

.. Not forgetting age and vigour .

[treeseer]

The long-established process of Compartmentalisation of Dryness in Trees (CODIT) always happens to some extent.

This is very often ignored by rookie risk assessors, and tree cutters selling removal work based on decay.

I reduced 2 Liquidambar with 10 cm cuts; the CODIT in the one with root issues is poor/fair, the undisturbed tree is closing well.

[Jesse]

Hi Kevin, i think this forum is going to like you a lot, for me a think the big influence is , and i say this from some one who over the years has wounded a lot of trees under instruction, as personally i am against any wounding of trees myself, vigour, how a given tree responds , age ,sp but vigour sums it, we are all different as people, how we as humans recover is much the same as trees, old folk don't do so well as those younger ones and the same to be said for trees, but also then consider sp. some trees respond very well , from the ultimate pruning cut... copice ! pioneer will always do best , or should i say recover best, but will they live the longest ??? next spanner in the works .. well pollards are some of the oldest trees (pruned) living . They do ok.