Deliberately wounding trees

A few years back I was over in Spain surveying a number of veteran lapsed beech pollards that were being worked back down to help conserve them.

Whilst there I noticed that a couple of years previously Ted Green (and others) had deliberately wounded some beech with an axe to break through the bark and cambium. The idea being that the resulting callous tissue could produce advantitious buds to help with the retrenchment process & create a lower canopy.

The results appeared random and I'm not sure if they were documented.

Photos of the Spanish examples below.

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Yesterday we carried out some wounding on a maiden beech which has decay issues (Ganoderma pfeiferri)

The tree has been reduced to bring it back down from above the surrounding canopies.

We are carrying out some controls at different heights, different compass points & different cut orientations, also will wound at different times of the year.

We'll revisit this thread with any results.

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Trialed a few types of cuts before going up then recorded the cuts up in the tree.

Using spikes to wound will be another set for the control.

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Interesting theory! I presume the aim here is to make the wounds small enough so that they callus quickly but large enough to trigger adventitious growth.

I would have anticipated adventitious growth from around the pruning wounds i.e. at the points the tree has been reduced to in the second picture(initial post). Are you finding that this is not the case? Who else has researched this i.e. who's example was Ted trying to emulate?

There's a PhD in that!

Quite brilliant David , another reason for forcing you to take me round the Heath next year 2013 when I plan to come over to see my mum.

I'll pm or email you before new year (don't worry doubt I'll be over before june/july...

Interesting theory! I presume the aim here is to make the wounds small enough so that they callus quickly but large enough to trigger adventitious growth.

I would have anticipated adventitious growth from around the pruning wounds i.e. at the points the tree has been reduced to in the second picture(initial post). Are you finding that this is not the case? Who else has researched this i.e. who's example was Ted trying to emulate?

There was the expected bud burst at the callous around prunning wounds (like in the shots below, which are from different trees than the ones in the first post) but the idea behind the incisions is (as you point out) to keep wounding down to a minimum and also to provide alternative points of potential growth throughout the bark surfaces of a tree.

I'll give Ted a call to see if it was originally his idea or developed from anyones research.

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A man after my own heart, I wounded a few trees in Salford doing this, need to get back to them to get the after pictures:thumbup:

I one point I was peeling bark off different species (that were being felled) to study the wood underneath to see if there was a way of identifying the best places to make a wound for adventitious buds to succeed

Sent from my Galaxy S2

I'll pm or email you before new year (don't worry doubt I'll be over before june/july...

Open door sean, as always

A man after my own heart, I wounded a few trees in Salford doing this, need to get back to them to get the after pictures:thumbup:

 

I one point I was peeling bark off different species (that were being felled) to study the wood underneath to see if there was a way of identifying the best places to make a wound for adventitious buds to succeed

 

What were you wounding with Rob ?

Pictorals always key to communicating ones findings.

What species were you playing with, I can't remember ?

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Whereabouts in Spain was this? Reminds me of Parque Natural Saja-Besaya, where I once spent a happy week admiring the beech (amongst other things).