Focus on cleaning. Avoid removing live wood and foliage as this could speed the decline. Removing live wood lowers the auxin content, which is the hormone that promotes root growth. Removing foliage reduces photosynthesis and levels of stored carbohydrates that the tree is living on.
Pruning of mature trees should essentially be done (1) to remove dead branches that occur from time to time and (2) to reduce risk of branch failure.
Excessive pruning causes a tree to form water sprouts sometimes called suckers. Water sprouts are often seen as clusters of small twigs and branches that sprout from a pruning cut stub or from the interior portion of larger branches. Sprouts are a way the tree has to put out more leaves as quickly as it can to make more carbohydrates. Unknowledgeable tree services will offer to come back for a fee, of course, to “clean up” those ugly sprouts, which the tree service caused in the first place by excessive pruning
Dr Ed Gillman (Univ. FL)- Often 5 to 10% is enough on mature trees. Excessive sprouting can be an indication that the tree was over-pruned. Up to about 25% of the live foliage can be thinned from young trees.
Removing only lower and interior branches results in a weak tree. This so-called lions tailing causes problems. DO NOT prune trees in this manner.
The tree also looks as though it was pruned, a situation often associated with poor tree care carried out by untrained workers. Raising the canopy all at once could also cause tree failure by leaving too much weight at the top of the tree. To avoid lack of balance after canopy raising the distance between the bottom and top of the canopy should be at least 2/3 the height of the tree.
Remove some water sprouts, if you wish. But remember that trees usually produce water sprouts due to a stress like root loss, root damage, storm damage, loss of branches, topping, disease, over-pruning, improper thinning, and other reasons
Since the leaves of the tree are the food factories of the tree, severe pruning should be discouraged. Mature trees should have no more than 10 percent of the foliage removed unless there is a good reason to remove more. Younger trees may be able to tolerate a heavier pruning dose to improve future tree structure. Large pruning cuts are much more prone to decay than smaller cuts. Also, larger pruning cuts cause the tree to divert precious energy toward defense that could be allocated to growth and maintenance.
Are you guilty of lions tailing your trees? The use of this type of tree pruning has been on rise in Northeast Florida. It is being sold to homeowners as a method of tree pruning that will make their trees more wind resistant. The problem is that nothing could be further from the truth. The practice of lions tailing seems to have appeared out of the blue. There is no standard of proper tree pruning that involves lions tailing. It appears the popularity has risen among tree cutters, because it is much easier to reach and remove the interior branches than it would be to properly tie into the tree and selectively prune using proper pruning guidelines. Let me first describe lions tailing. This type of tree pruning involves removing the interior branches of a tree and leaving all the foliage growth at the ends of the branches. When it is completed, a lions-tailed tree looks very open with exposed branches and just an umbrella of leaves left in the canopy. After a tree has been lions tailed, all the weight of the branch is now concentrated at the end of the branch. (top crown area of the tree) The weight of the foliage is no longer distributed along the branch, just at the end. This leaves the branch more likely to fail.
Excessive removal of lower limbs can slow development of trunk taper, can cause cracks or decay in the trunk, and transfers too much weight to the top of the tree (Figure 19). Mature trees could become stressed if large diameter lower branches are removed.
This is unfortunately a pretty common malpractice – the ignorant tree pruner sometimes claims to the unsuspecting tree owner that “thinning” the tree will let wind through and lessen the chance of storm breakage, and they do THIS. But this is not thinning – the name for it is LIONSTAILING. It doesn’t achieve the effect claimed because all the leaf surface area is now at the end of the branch where the wind force has the most leverage on the branch, instead of evenly distributed as “nature intended” (as evolution perfected).
And then, all that light let in on the previously shaded bark causes the tree to waste valuable stored energy putting out sprouts, and it can’t make the needed amount of food (sugar) (energy) because of the reduced amount of foliage. This could likely be the beginning of the irreversible decline of the health of this mature tree. What a shame.
Actual thinning is not harmful, it can be good. It takes skill to get out to the ends of the branches where the thinning cuts need to be. And if the cuts are made correctly, according to ANSI standards and using the 3 to 1 rule, you probably won’t even notice it was pruned if you are driving by.
This over-lifting or over-thinning is often referred to as lions-tailing. It leaves live branches only at the tips of the canopy. Tremendous numbers of sprouts often result from this type of tree mutilation.
(This pruning style is known as lion tailing and is very bad for trees, because it severely reduces the trees ability to manufacture food from sunlight. Also a tree pruned this way is more likely to suffer damage from storms. Repeated defoliation of this kind can predispose a tree to stress and eventually decline. We strongly advise against it.)
Pruning of mature trees should essentially be done (1) to remove dead branches that occur from time to time and (2) to reduce risk of branch failure.
Excessive pruning causes a tree to form water sprouts sometimes called suckers. Water sprouts are often seen as clusters of small twigs and branches that sprout from a pruning cut stub or from the interior portion of larger branches. Sprouts are a way the tree has to put out more leaves as quickly as it can to make more carbohydrates. Unknowledgeable tree services will offer to come back for a fee, of course, to “clean up” those ugly sprouts, which the tree service caused in the first place by excessive pruning
Dr Ed Gillman (Univ. FL)- Often 5 to 10% is enough on mature trees. Excessive sprouting can be an indication that the tree was over-pruned. Up to about 25% of the live foliage can be thinned from young trees.
Removing only lower and interior branches results in a weak tree. This so-called lions tailing causes problems. DO NOT prune trees in this manner.
The tree also looks as though it was pruned, a situation often associated with poor tree care carried out by untrained workers. Raising the canopy all at once could also cause tree failure by leaving too much weight at the top of the tree. To avoid lack of balance after canopy raising the distance between the bottom and top of the canopy should be at least 2/3 the height of the tree.
Remove some water sprouts, if you wish. But remember that trees usually produce water sprouts due to a stress like root loss, root damage, storm damage, loss of branches, topping, disease, over-pruning, improper thinning, and other reasons
Since the leaves of the tree are the food factories of the tree, severe pruning should be discouraged. Mature trees should have no more than 10 percent of the foliage removed unless there is a good reason to remove more. Younger trees may be able to tolerate a heavier pruning dose to improve future tree structure. Large pruning cuts are much more prone to decay than smaller cuts. Also, larger pruning cuts cause the tree to divert precious energy toward defense that could be allocated to growth and maintenance.
Are you guilty of lions tailing your trees? The use of this type of tree pruning has been on rise in Northeast Florida. It is being sold to homeowners as a method of tree pruning that will make their trees more wind resistant. The problem is that nothing could be further from the truth. The practice of lions tailing seems to have appeared out of the blue. There is no standard of proper tree pruning that involves lions tailing. It appears the popularity has risen among tree cutters, because it is much easier to reach and remove the interior branches than it would be to properly tie into the tree and selectively prune using proper pruning guidelines. Let me first describe lions tailing. This type of tree pruning involves removing the interior branches of a tree and leaving all the foliage growth at the ends of the branches. When it is completed, a lions-tailed tree looks very open with exposed branches and just an umbrella of leaves left in the canopy. After a tree has been lions tailed, all the weight of the branch is now concentrated at the end of the branch. (top crown area of the tree) The weight of the foliage is no longer distributed along the branch, just at the end. This leaves the branch more likely to fail.
Excessive removal of lower limbs can slow development of trunk taper, can cause cracks or decay in the trunk, and transfers too much weight to the top of the tree (Figure 19). Mature trees could become stressed if large diameter lower branches are removed.
This is unfortunately a pretty common malpractice – the ignorant tree pruner sometimes claims to the unsuspecting tree owner that “thinning” the tree will let wind through and lessen the chance of storm breakage, and they do THIS. But this is not thinning – the name for it is LIONSTAILING. It doesn’t achieve the effect claimed because all the leaf surface area is now at the end of the branch where the wind force has the most leverage on the branch, instead of evenly distributed as “nature intended” (as evolution perfected).
And then, all that light let in on the previously shaded bark causes the tree to waste valuable stored energy putting out sprouts, and it can’t make the needed amount of food (sugar) (energy) because of the reduced amount of foliage. This could likely be the beginning of the irreversible decline of the health of this mature tree. What a shame.
Actual thinning is not harmful, it can be good. It takes skill to get out to the ends of the branches where the thinning cuts need to be. And if the cuts are made correctly, according to ANSI standards and using the 3 to 1 rule, you probably won’t even notice it was pruned if you are driving by.
This over-lifting or over-thinning is often referred to as lions-tailing. It leaves live branches only at the tips of the canopy. Tremendous numbers of sprouts often result from this type of tree mutilation.
(This pruning style is known as lion tailing and is very bad for trees, because it severely reduces the trees ability to manufacture food from sunlight. Also a tree pruned this way is more likely to suffer damage from storms. Repeated defoliation of this kind can predispose a tree to stress and eventually decline. We strongly advise against it.)
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