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Posted: Jun/08/2007 1:56 PM PST
At first I thought my peach pruning had done some damage to those trees I have and killed some of the branches plus one tree. Several years ago the utility company pruned side by side silver and sugar maples. The sugar maple is fine, but the pruned parts of the silver maple are all dead. Then I noticed one of the trees in my backyard, a sugar, has dead branches where I cut those, too. Any ideas? The trees are all old, but not all are affected. Thanks! |
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Posted: Jun/08/2007 7:08 PM PST
Pictures Poe! |
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Posted: Jun/13/2007 6:26 PM PST
The first picture is one that the trimmers did. The others are a couple I did. Is it possible that was just natural die off? Now I'm wondering if I just cut those myself because they were dead and hanging. I don't remember now. Thanks for your help. Attachments:    |
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Posted: Jun/13/2007 8:29 PM PST
The trimmers did you no favors.... "dehorning, topping, pollarding, etc" is very poor prunning practice. It looks like the tree made a half hearted effort to recover for a year then said "nuts, why bother". The long and short of it was that large limb was a liability using more resources than it produced.... the tree cut its losses. Pic # 2 looks like normal lower limb attrition. As trees grow, the lower branches fall into the shade of the upper ones. When the light levels become so low that photosynthesis is minimal, again, the cost of mainining those lower limbs is more than they produce. Trees would make ideal business owners. |
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Posted: Jun/14/2007 6:59 AM PST
Thanks so much for the info. I'm not real sure what to do about the tree in the front yard that the trimmers did. The rest of it looks pretty healthy and green. If the "40 years for every foot" is accurate for age it's about 100 years old now. The bark is peeling off in places badly. It makes a beautiful backdrop for my hostas though. Attachments:  |
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Posted: Jun/14/2007 4:47 PM PST
It does look like some stem injury on the right. In general the older bark on a silver maple will exfoliate as the tree reaches some size. Regarding the 40 year rule. That would be 3 inches in diameter growth every ten years..... not too shabby for most hardwood trees.... but definitely slow for a silver maple..... which ought to achieve 4 to 6 inches every 10 years. Silver maples are fast growing, but also have soft and brittle wood. Now a 3 inch per 10 year growth rate for sugar maple might be considered outstanding. Sugar maple is notorious for being slow.... which is why people plant the onerous Norway and silver maples. But alas patience is a virtue.... the wait for a sugar maple is time well spent. |
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Posted: Jun/16/2007 7:16 PM PST
That was just a single site that happened to give the age thing. I wasn't sure about it. A logger told me once that a tree of the same type and size was about 80 years old so I thought it sounded pretty close. I'm studying other trees to see how they're shedding just to compare them. Thanks again for all your help. 
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