Tree Surgery You Need To Know
Pruning trees can be useful for making adjustments to the tree, to maintain its safety, remove dead branches or just keep an eye on growth. It is also used for shaping the size of the tree and produce better flowers, fruit or timber. Proper pruning can help maintain the appearance, health and safety of your trees. Our tree surgeon Coventry goes deeper on the terms used by tree care professionals.
It’s important for clients to have a basic understanding of commonplace terms used when describing tree work. This way they can know what is being discussed, and share their thoughts and ideas in discussions with the arboriculturist. It’s not just the height of the tree that is affected by pruning, but also the shape. A crown thin won’t reduce height but may make a tree fatter instead, while a crown lift to 4m could make your tree thinner and longer.
Although pruning varies depending on the type of plant, there are 3 main options. Click through for an outline of the most common terms if you want to know what they mean.
Be careful not to harm already protected trees. The wilful felling or even pruning a protected tree without consent from your Local Planning Authority may be a criminal offence.
Check with your town’s Tree Officer and Planning Department to make sure you can do work on certain trees or historical areas before proceeding.
Definitions You Should Know
Crown Thinning
Crown thinning is one of bonsai’s most challenging aspects. It often requires the removal of smaller branches, usually on the outer part of the branch, to give each branch space to grow evenly. Crown thinning is usually implemented for broad-leaved trees. It does not alter the tree’s shape or size, but it does prevent liability. You should remove material systematically from throughout the tree, never more than 30%.
As the crown of the tree grows, taller, it tends to shade some of the branches. Shading on some branches can keep them from growing large enough to eventually support their own weight. To avoid this problem it’s common for some parts of the tree to be trimmed back (crown thinning) so they’ll get more light and will grow quicker, making them stronger.
Crown Lifting and Raising
Branch removal is a job where the branches from the lowest levels are removed from a tree. Crown lifting should never be performed with the intention of removing large branches. This can have unintended consequences and lead to a decline or more losses down the line.
Crown lifting should be limited on older trees. The best thing to do is remove it from the secondary branches and shortening of the main branches, not removing it all together. Crown lifting is a technique used for allowing more light to penetrate to areas closer to the tree, or for safe access under the crown. The minimum should be 67%, but never more than 15%.
Reducing the Crown of A Tree
The branch height and/or branch spread can be decreased by trimming. There are a number of different reasons you might need to use Crown Reduction. This can be due to branch breaking, adapting the tree for its environment, or light impact, among other potential problems. The final product should include as much as possible of the original framework. In order to trim a tooth, it is important to have a clear view of the half of the tooth you want to remove whilst keeping as much intact as possible.
Crown reductions need to be small and usually not bigger than 100mm diameter unless there is a compelling reason for that. A “reduction” can be measured using numbers or written as a list of the items being removed, e.g. Crown has been reduced by 2.0m in height and 1.0 meter in spread, to dimensions of 18 meters high by 11 meters wide. Crown reduction is not suitable for all sorts of animal species. One needs to be careful while interpreting it as topping. Topping can lead to a lot of unintended consequences and we should be more careful about the meaning and implication behind this term.
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