fixing bad pruning cuts

Maui Palm & Tree Care

Maui Palm & Tree Care

Location
Pukalani, Hawaii
i have a job coming up next week and the tree is a monkey pod with lots of stubs but heres the catch. the cambium has begun to grow over the part of the stubs that are at the branch bark ridge but is not growing over the bottom of the stub because it was made at a bad angle. is it safe for me to fix these cuts? i remember learning that if you cut into the cambium it hurts the tree more. help me out please thanks :/
 
Never cut into compartmentalizing wood is what I have been told. Remove as much of the old wood as possible, but dont touch the wound wood......Im sure someone more smartah than me will chime in.
 
A while ago this sort of discussion came up. The language of stubs and knobs came up. Stubs are still livewood. Cut them off at the collar. Knobs are stubs that have been encapsulated by live tissue. Do NOT cut off knobs, cut off the stub sticking out of them.

In one of Shigo's books there are pictures of what happens when a collar is cut which will result in new decay. You'll break CODIT walls if you cut any live tissue.
 
Thats a tough one to answer. I would let ma nature do her thing. like tom said cut off any extra material that isn't wound wood, you don't want to mess with CODIT and create a worse problem.

Pictures would help immensely here.
 
do not cut below the collar. and if the stubs are long cut back to deadwood outside the collar (mostly cosmetics) donot cut into the collar follow ansi pruning standards and shigos theories.donot cut into live wood.IMO
 
my current take: i have come to feel that, some times, cleaning up old bad cuts just takes more time than it is worth. And sometimes it is so hard to see just where the live tissue has made it to! Sure, you can spend a lot of time on them, and make 'em look real nice, but, really, the damage has been done already and it is best to focus on parts of the tree that you can do more things for. Sure, maybe it would help some to get the dead wood out, but mostly i focus on the stubs that either "catch the eye" aesthetically or gum up the works biologically (decay) and move on. From a production standpoint of being an arborist trying to deliver value to the tree's owner, it is just a lot of horsing around for something that the people below (and perhaps the tree) are not going to notice or understand what they are paying for. If the tree has been hacked and/or whacked by your predecessor, that's the way things are for that tree. Learn what you can about how it responded. Save details for the trees that can really benefit. just one way of looking at it.
prune on,
Pete
 
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my current take: i have come to feel that, some times, cleaning up old bad cuts just takes more time than it is worth. ...it is just a lot of horsing around for something that the people below (and perhaps the tree) are not going to notice or understand what they are paying for.

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They will if you tell em.
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They will better if you show em.

agree w tom, etc, though sometimes i will trim back woundwood if it is feeble or to meet the goal of good closure.
 
I don't know the name of the tree that you mentioned, but on most trees that I have worked with you can tell where the live tissue ends and the dead wood begins...cut off the dead wood, leave the live wood. If you have to err, err on the live wood side, meaning leave some dead wood...don't cut live wood. trees have been around much longer than arborculture has been around. the tree can drop its own dead wood. i know this is a running debate. but seriously, does anyone really think that trees do better with us interfering? i know that it is a toss up between tree health and client satisfaction, but...i have come to think of the tree as my client and trying to find ways to save my client from the home owner. in most situations my client will out live the home owner. please just cut the dead tissue and leave the tree to its own devices!
 
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trees have been around much longer than arborculture has been around. the tree can drop its own dead wood. i know this is a running debate. but seriously, does anyone really think that trees do better with us interfering?

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I do. A tree is not a forest by itself, so skill and knowledge can easily increase its longevity and health. Likewise, lack of knowledge and skill will surely be detrimental to its wellbeing.

Dave
 
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trees have been around much longer than arborculture has been around. the tree can drop its own dead wood. i know this is a running debate. but seriously, does anyone really think that trees do better with us interfering?

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I do. A tree is not a forest by itself, so skill and knowledge can easily increase its longevity and health. Likewise, lack of knowledge and skill will surely be detrimental to its wellbeing.

Dave

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Leaving a forest ecosystem as a whole, untouched, is going to be different than one specimen tree in a front yard, where the landscape is managed.

Certain things we do(lots of them) are for peoples' benefits, whereas a portion of things we do benefits that one individual tree.

In a forest, I imagine that more individual trees die than live to become large and long-living. Browsing, competition for resources, falling limbs and trees damage/ kill forest trees, yet the ecosystem if never managed is probably just fine/ better off without us.



Part of what we do for people can mean that the tree stays much longer in the landscape. If there is a tree with large dead limbs over a house, our intervention of deadwooding the tree, can help the HO to see that the tree is reasonable to stay, rather than being removed.
 
love this thread. i'm in the don't cut into live wood to clean up a stub club, but i like the distinction that if the previous cut was inaccurate and generated a weak response it's ok to make a better cut so the tree's natural defense system can be more effective. for me it depends on the species, and has little or nothing to do with whether the homeowner can see the work (high or low) or whether the job was correctly bid (by me..). for example, around here madronas will go to town with broken/malpruned stubs and send tissue way the heck out from the trunk, which results in crazy-looking knobs of live tissue. i don't argue with the tree on this - figure evolution is smarter than my well-intentioned little brain. but on a doug fir with tons of busted little (2") jaggedy stubs from snow damage, i'll cut every dang one because this species will shed these stubbies eventually anyway.

i have also told new climbers headed up that "if you leave a stub, it becomes yours" - in an effort to encourage a sense of stewardship for each tree they prune. maybe i'll have to have a chat with the crew to elaborate a bit, based on this conversation.
thanks for making me think :)
my .02

k.
 
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