Resources
Arborists can provide a variety of services to help maintain your valuable investment.
Pruning–
The arborist can determine what type of pruning is necessary to maintain or improve the health, appearance and safety of your trees. These techniques include:
- Eliminating branches that rub each other
- Removing limbs that interfere with wires, building facades, gutters, roofs, chimneys, or windows, or that obstruct streets or sidewalks.
- Removing dead or weak limbs that pose a hazard or may lead to decay
- Removing diseased or insect-infested limbs
- Creating better structure to lessen wind resistance and reduce the potential for storm damage
- Training young trees
- Removing limbs damaged by adverse weather conditions
- Thinning or removal of unnecessary branches
- Improving the shape or silhouette of the tree
Removal -
Although tree removal is a last resort, there are circumstances when it is necessary. An arborist can help decide whether or not a tree should be removed. Arborists have the skills and equipment to safely and efficiently remove trees.
- The tree is dead or dying
- The tree is causing an obstruction that is impossible to correct through pruning
- The tree is crowding and causing harm to other trees
- The tree is to be replaced by a more suitable specimen
- The tree should be removed to allow for new construction
Emergency Tree Care -
Storms may cause limbs or entire trees to fail, often landing on homes, cars, other structures or other trees. The weight of storm-damaged trees is great and they can be very dangerous to remove or trim. An arborist can assist in performing the job in a sage manner, while recuing further risk of damage to your property.
Planting -
Some arborist’s plant trees and most can recommend what types of trees are appropriate for a specific location. The wrong tree in the wrong location could lead to future problems due to limited growing space, insects, diseases, or poor growth.
Other Services -
Many arborsits also provide a variety of other tree care services including:
- Practicing Plant Health Care, a concept of preventive maintenance to keep trees in good health, which will help the tree better defend itself against insects, disease and site problems
- Fertilization
- Cabling or bracing for added support to branches with weak attachment
- Aeration to improve root growth
- Installing of lightning protection systems
- Spraying or injecting to control certain insect or disease problems
Why Topping Hurts Trees
Why Topping Hurts Trees Topping is the indiscriminate cutting back of tree branches to stubs or lateral branches that are not large enough to assume the terminal role. Other names for topping include “heading. ”hat-racking.” and “rounding over.”
The most common reason given for topping is to reduce the size of a tree. Often homeowners feel that their threes have become too large for their property. People fear that tall tress my pose a hazard. Topping, however, is not a viable method of height reduction, and certainly does not reduce the hazard. In fact, topping will make a tree more hazardous in the long term.
Topping Caused Decay
The preferred location to make a pruning cut is just beyond the branch collar at the branch’s point of attachment. The tree is biologically equipped to close such a wound provided the wound is not too large. Cuts made along a limb, between lateral branches, create stubs with wounds that the tree may not be able to close. The exposed wood tissues begin to decay. Normally a tree will “wall off” or compartmentalize the decayling tissues. But few trees can defend the multiple severe wounds caused by topping. The decay organisms are given a free path to move down through the branches.
Topping Can Lead to Sunburn
Branches within a tree’s crown produce thousands of leaves to absorb sunlight. When the leaves are removed, the remaining branches and trunk are suddenly exposed to high levels of light and heat. The result may be sunburn of the tissues beneath the bark. This can lead to cankers, bark splitting and death of some branches.
Topping Creates Hazards
The survival mechanism that causes a tree to produce multiple shoots below each topping cut comes at great expense to the tree. These shoots develop from buds near the surface of the old branches. Unlike normal branches that develop in a “socket” of overlapping wood tissues, these new shoots are only anchored in the outermost layers of the parent branches.
The new shoots grow very quickly, as much as 20 feet in one year, in some species. Unfortunately, the shoots are very prone to breaking, especially during windy conditions. The irony is that while the goal was to reduce the tree’s height to make it safer, it has been made more hazardous than before.
Topping Makes Trees Ugly
The natural branching structure of a tree is a biological wonder. Trees form a variety of shapes and growth habits, all with the same goal of presenting their leaves to the sun. Topping removes the ends of the branches, often leaving ugly stubs. Topping destroys the natural form of a tree.
Without the leaves (up to six months of the year in temperature climates) a topped tree appears disfigured and mutilated. With the leaves, it is a dense ball of foliage, lacking its simple grace. A tree that has been topped can never fully regain its natural form.
Topping Makes Trees Ugly
The cost of topping a tree is not limited to what the perpetor is paid. If the tree survives, it will require pruning again within a few years. It will either need to be reduced again, or storm damage will have to be cleaned up. If the tree dies it will have be removed. Topping is a high maintance pruning practice.
There are some hidden costs of topping. One is the reduction in property value. Healthy, well maintained trees can add 10-20% to the value of the property. Disfigured, topped trees are considered an impending expense.
Another potential cost of topped trees is the potential liability. Topped trees are prone to breaking and can be hazardous. Since topping is considered to be an unacceptable pruning practice, any damage caused by branch failure of a topped tree may lead to a finding of negligence in a court of law.
Alternatives to Topping
There are times when a tree must be reduced in height or spread. Providing clearance for utility lines is as example. There are recommended techniques for doing this. If practical, branches should be removed back to their point of origin. If a branch must be shortened, it should be cut back to a lateral that is large enough to assume the terminal role. A rule of thumb for this is to cut back to a lateral that is at least 1/3 the diameter of the limb being removed.
This method of branch reduction helps to preserve the natural form of the tree. However, if large cuts are involved, the tree may not be able to close over and compartmentalize the wounds. Sometimes the best solution is to remove the tree and replace it with a species that is more appropriate for the site.
Developed by the International Society of Arboriculture (ISA), a non-profit organization supporting tree care research around the world and dedicated to the care and preservation of shade and ornamental trees. For further information, contact: ISA, P.O. Box 3129, Champaign, IL. 61826-3129, USA
@1995 International Society of Arboriculture.
Copyright © 2010 Aerial Tree Services Ltd.
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