Pollarding

[Maui Palm & Tree Care]

so basically pollarding = keeping the tree at a desired height as a compromise to cutting it down. why would you let the tree slowly suffer and then die? thats kinda brutal IMO.
what happens when the person cant afford an arborist anymore and the tree is allowed to grow with out the annual pollard? as we all know those branches will get much larger and split off the host trunk at some point. i guess these are all things to keep in mind. i personally would not pollard a tree that hasnt already been polarded becuase i dont want to dirty my name with the guys here that offer TOPPING as a service. for the un educated eye, pollards look the same as topping. why risk your credibility?

 

[ryansenechal]

Good point JT. Pollarding can be a decent effect if consistently managed by someone who knows what they're doing, although in today's market, what percentage of your customer base has been on board for 3 cycles or more?

It always floors me to see specimen or other trees in general that had obviously been well cared for, then get turned over to a new service provider, who in turn devastate it.

I just drove up on some London Plane pollards on a waterfront corridor in a town up island that shall remain nameless -- Let's just say they were on a 3 year cycle, and whoever made the cuts this time around got into rejuvenation territory of about 2" plus diameter. There were no shoots visible as of June 12th, and the effect is not pleasing. They are planted with minimal soil volume in a hostile environment to say the least.

 

[Maui Palm & Tree Care]

[ QUOTE ]
Josh, take the time to do some research.

http://www.maisonbotanique.com/dyn/2acte_10_ferrini.pdf

http://www.forestry.gov.uk/forestry/INFD-849L3Y

http://www.kent-treecare.co.uk/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=58&Itemid=71

http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/main/w-v...forest-faqs.htm

http://aces.nmsu.edu/pubs/_h/h-156.pdf

[/ QUOTE ]

i have done my research. im also entitled to my opinion. i dont know if you have ever been to hawaii but its bad here when it omes to tree care. absolutely every tree touched by a "tree service" has been topped. just like we all do alot of dead wooding, they top trees. they all have some fat guy behind the desk who is a certified arborist or has been one and is never on the job sites and never follows up on the crews pruning practices. it used to annoy the hell outta me that we have to compete with these hackers. no one on any of these crews even knows what the cambium is. they just know how to cut into a tree with a chainsaw. its like the foreman gives em the saw and says "go nuts".

 

[benfuest]

Pollards are all about producing product, that was the only reason for doing it. As the product became obsolete so did the practice. There are many woodland restoration programs in place, a return to old skills like coppice cutting for hurdles, besoms, trugs, tent pegs all the product of the bogger and charcoal burner.
Thinning of woodlands rather than clear fell to encourage continua s cover and a forest canopy existing at different levels/height. Coppice with standards being a good example, tie it all together and you get better diversity in forna and flora. Blue bells, wild daffs and the door mouse. In my what ever this is the realm of the sylviculture an holistic approach to woodland management.
Perhaps the problem is taking an element of this holistic approach and extracting it for use outside of its intended environmental context. Or in some circumstances that environment is slowly picked away at till all that is left is a big old pollard know seemingly to exist out of place. The context is lost.

 

[treevet]

[ QUOTE ]
Pollards are all about producing product, that was the only reason for doing it. As the product became obsolete so did the practice. There are many woodland restoration programs in place, a return to old skills like coppice cutting for hurdles, besoms, trugs, tent pegs all the product of the bogger and charcoal burner.
Thinning of woodlands rather than clear fell to encourage continua s cover and a forest canopy existing at different levels/height. Coppice with standards being a good example, tie it all together and you get better diversity in forna and flora. Blue bells, wild daffs and the door mouse. In my what ever this is the realm of the sylviculture an holistic approach to woodland management.
Perhaps the problem is taking an element of this holistic approach and extracting it for use outside of its intended environmental context. Or in some circumstances that environment is slowly picked away at till all that is left is a big old pollard know seemingly to exist out of place. The context is lost.

[/ QUOTE ]

Maybe not unlike moonlighting or unemployed electric company tree cutters, formerly restricting tree's growth to stay under the wires, applying that practice (topping) to residential and muni trees nowhere near wires for profit. Usually, but not always, instigated by the cutter and not requested by the tree owner/manager. But an affinity by less intellectual types developed for that "lollypop" shape on every tree.

 

[guymayor]

"the newly formed lower canopy epicormics are inherently weaker than original branches, due to the way they are attached. As such, they're prone to failure in highwinds, quite often just popping off from relatively weak attachments(hence the need for the fence).

Always worth baring that in mind in management of this type of tree, so reduction of these epis before they get too heavy/elongated is prudent."

[ QUOTE ]
why would you let the tree slowly suffer and then die? thats kinda brutal IMO....we all know those branches will get much larger and split off the host trunk at some point. ...for the un educated eye, pollards look the same as topping. why risk your credibility?

[/ QUOTE ]

grover and josh are talking about trees that get severe reductions, whether by saw or storm, then no restoration pruning. this is not a good thing, but it's far from inevitable that regrowth is prone to failure, or that the tree will slowly suffer and die.
josh i agree the treatments of the monkeypods etc left me Horrified in Honolulu, but those trees were not suffering and dying. you may be caught between the Scylla of narrow rules based on Cliff's Notes-type reading of the literature, and the Charybdis of the power of trees to overcome. Thanks to Gordon, and treesplease for the reminder of the metaphor.

Training sprouts into stable branches and restoring form is not hard. After sprouting slows, start with "remove 1/3, reduce 1/3, leave 1/3 to dominate" per Gilman.

Dave, a lot of people studied tree biology before 1960. Look at the dozens of works that Shigo references. I agree with you about form--classic tree shape IS nicer, but it does not always work, and we need options short of removal.

And if a tree responds to periodic pruning in such a way that it stands over 900 years

, is it not complicit in that practice?

The answers to all this can be found in the ANSI A300 Standards.

 

[treevet]

[ QUOTE ]

Dave, a lot of people studied tree biology before 1960. Look at the dozens of works that Shigo references. I agree with you about form--classic tree shape IS nicer, but it does not always work, and we need options short of removal.

[/ QUOTE ]

I should have been more specific Guy....Tree biology as it pertains to this subject and the previously held belief that decay spreads unchecked through a tree as opposed to compartmentalization.

We have ofcourse Shigo to thank for dispelling this myth as much disdain as you have for his giant shadow he casts over you my friend.

And what's up with a dif. 1/3 rule? Do you have selective 1/3 rule indignation lol? Cheers Guy.

 

[peder-d]

I am glad I got this thread started

Cool with a lot of good answers and ideas!
I think I found some good arguments for my clients, when it comes to the difference between over-pruning and pollarding.

In my opinion, pollarding can be beautiful artisticly pruning. It is a high maintanence pruning technique, and can not be compared to topping. I would say, that 99% of the time, topping is being done because the person doing the pruning doesnt know how to do a propper pruning, or that the person pruning is just doing it because the customer wants it, and he/she does not guide the customer to a better solution. Again - my opinion - based on my own experience.

 

[guymayor]

Good points, Peder.

Dave, I do like 1/3 guidelines, and that's not a shadow, it's the sunlight! Also Don Marx helped with that disspelling. Did you see the CODIT article in ArbNews April page 28? Europeans have questioned the old model since it came out, and now they have the science to prove that the D also stands for Dryness, Dysfunction and Damage, all of which precede Decay.

This gets the focus off the microbes, and back on the tree where it belongs. Dr. Shigo would appreciate seeing the model finally evolve, as that moves arboriculture forward. And if dryness leads to decay, what does that say about experimentally applying wound sealants in some cases? Confession: I painted 3 cuts on a red oak yesterday. But that's another thread.