Late Winter Notes on Tree Care

This is a portion of an article written in February ‘05 for the Hull Massachusetts Garden Club by Julie McIntosh Shapiro. It is printed here with the author’s permission. It is a long article, so it will be presented in several segments.

While you’re looking out your windows, now might be a great time to examine the trees on your property and those close by, to see if any have suffered damage from the latest winter storm. Mario Vaden, an Oregon state arborist checks in with us with his list of things to look for in a dangerous or hazardous tree:

9. SUSPENDED, DETACHED LIMBS OR TREE TOPS.

Sometimes limbs and tree tops break loose and only fall a few feet, getting caught in the remaining parts of the tree, or in other trees. Sometimes they are hard to spot. Spend plenty of time viewing your trees from different angles as you look up and down throughout the entire canopy. Check your trees to make sure the tip of the leader, or tips or leaders, are still intact.

10. A LARGE DIAMETER TRUNK OVER A SMALLER DIAMETER.

Some trees are grafted, one variety on another, and there will be a variance of trunk diameter, large over small. But usually, tree trunk diameter is consistent, with only a slight bit of taper moving upward, except maybe, the base of a Giant Sequoia. But what if your tree has, for example, a 12" diameter trunk up to 5' above the ground, and then immediately becomes an 18" diameter trunk? What is that? Sometimes a wire or rope has been left on a tree. Then the bark and tissue engulfs it. What happened, is that the roots sent nutrients up through the inner xylem, or wood tissue, to the leaves. Then the leaves made food, feeding the top, but not the roots, because the food can go down only as far as the girdled part of the trunk. That’s because the food made by the leaves moves down in the Phloem layer just under the bark. And when that layer is strangled, it stops the flow to the roots. In this case, the trunk, limbs and leaves above the girdle get fed, but the trunk and roots below the girdle starve. It takes several years for a tree like this to die. Each year it gets weaker, and more hazardous. The top gets bigger and heavier, but the lower trunk supporting it stays almost the same size while slowly starving to death and getting weaker.

Late Winter Notes on Tree Care - Part 4

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