Pruner's Remorse: a tale of my Honeylocust

[Stumpsprouts]

I have been following this thread and marveling at the conversation. Learned a lot I didn't know, and laughed a lot at comments, not because they were silly, but because they are so damn different from my part of this planet.
Town / Country
I live smack dab in the middle of the Chippawa National Forest with well over 2 million trees on my property. My nearest neighbor is 3/4 of a mile through the woods. All of my work revolves around storm damage, line clearing, hazard removal, and clearing for building sites. If I get called, the tree(s) coming down. No chipping or hauling. It remains where it fell, or it is piled and burnt on site if it needs to be gone. I think I would be calling my friends on the phone and sharing a good laugh if I ever got a call for a job to prune a tree for aesthetic value. A yard here is an opening in the forest just large enough so a tree will not hit your house when it falls. We don't plant trees, they just come up on their own. Quite often where you don't want them. Every year I have hundreds of cedar, maple, birch, spruce, white pine, and aspen trees coming up against the house and garage which I have to remove. The oaks sprout out of my raised bed gardens where the squirrels have managed to bury the acorns by the hundreds.
So, I am chuckling at the comments about buying trees at a nursery, and pruning trees to make them look better, or to help them along. I get it. But it is just so foreign to me.
Pray continue.

Love it!
Have any pics of some of your favorite trees in your woods?

I hiked up one side of the holler here and found an outcropping of chestnut oak and white oak that just slayed me. Probably survived a few logging cycles. Didn’t have a camera but I hope to take some snaps soon, was a great example of what happens when you just leave things be.

 

[Mossy Dell]

A honeylocust is rather shade intolerant. Usually a tree’s leaf or needle size and density will inform you of what it’s preference is, and the amount of natural internal branch shedding in older age also gives this away.

I don’t think trees want to break and fall over. If that was the case, they wouldn’t be spending so much time building up reaction wood. So we can generally help a tree reach a ripe old age with good structure even after the nursery tried their best to wreck it.

A shade intolerant tree grown in full sun can end up with just as many issues as a shade tolerant tree grown in full sun. Take a dogwood for example…it’s an understory species with an opposite bud pattern. A recipe for a disaster of inclusions that we often can’t fix with a few choice, small pruning cuts at low dosage and higher frequency by the time a client calls.

Now take the shade intolerant tree with an overstory potential and give it full sun without touching it through its whole life. If grown under shelterwood, despite its more decurrent habit, you will likely likely not see that manifest until the crown gains enough light. So in full sun, it will generally create several leaders destined to become inclusions.

The way I try to prune trees is to first consider their habit and overall potential. I also consider “how” they grow with the analogy of a very thick layer of paint with extensions from each terminal.

If a tree has a the potential to be very large (overatory) my approach would be to avoid numerous cuts on the periphery, but rather aim for ideal structure with cuts that thin out overly dense nodes and immediately get inclusions out of the picture. I also consider available light and where any branch will likely go, including the effects of its own upper crown on lower branches. A lateral branch may end up steering more upright if shad is removed from above it.

I think the art of pruning is how well you consider the science and apply a skilled hand.

As others have said, a young tree can be very forgiving, so don’t sweat too much over what you did. Just spend some time with the case study of the Aurthur Clough Oak and see what “tree time” can accomplish.

Thanks, oceans. I was able to find the article in ISA Arborist labeled Conservation Arboriculture and titles "Learning From Old Trees, Artists, & Dead Poets" that discusses and pictures the Clough Oak. The photographic history shown is remarkable, even hard to accept, in that the tree changed form so much from 1910 to 2009.

What I got beyond that is how people, including arborists, tend to write off ancient trees far too soon. We assume they are goners—because of decay, hollow trunks, fungi—or are ruined—by wind, human accidents, age, or bad pruning—when trees can regenerate even at advanced ages.

Are there other studies of this oak available?

 

[oceans]

Thanks, oceans. I was able to find the article in ISA Arborist labeled Conservation Arboriculture and titles "Learning From Old Trees, Artists, & Dead Poets" that discusses and pictures the Clough Oak. The photographic history shown is remarkable, even hard to accept, in that the tree changed form so much from 1910 to 2009.

What I got beyond that is how people, including arborists, tend to write off ancient trees far too soon. We assume they are goners—because of decay, hollow trunks, fungi—or are ruined—by wind, human accidents, age, or bad pruning—when trees can regenerate even at advanced ages.

Are there other studies of this oak available?

Yes, I go for retrenchment if a client is willing to step outside the aesthetic box. I think an issue with trees in urban areas is simply the liability that comes along with allowing everything to go on its own and not touch them.

We should think about the evidence that prior civilizations touched trees a great deal, and somehow resulted in some of the greatest ship building timber a king could want, or a settler could shove through a fireplace. Anyhow, I don’t want to digress…

I do not know of any other studies of that particular Oak, but I grew up on a property that housed several trees. The most fun was a Catalpa that must have been pushed over at youth and left alone. It became the most complex, interesting, and fun provoking tree you’d ever want to climb and swing around in as a kid. Luckily, nobody cared to change anything about the situation back then, so future generations can hopefully appreciate it as long as possible!

 

[Shadowscape]

I have a cedar near the house that is about 6' at the base. Back in the late 60s the Pileated Woodpecker made an 8' long - 3' wide- and 16" deep trough in it. Over the many years I thought about harvesting that tree thinking it would die soon. Almost 60 years later it looks very healthy. I thought for sure the bugs the woodpecker had been going after, not to mention the dugout canoe he had carved out would kill it. That cedar shrugged it off and kept on going.
Sometimes I think those woodpeckers dig those large cavities just for the fun of it. I can fit my body in that cavity with lots of room to spare. My kids you to use it as a sort of fort when they were little.
There are reports that the Emerald Ash Bore is about 150 miles from me. It will be sad when it gets here as I have a few thousand Black Ash trees running through the lower areas. Another bug brought in by civilization.