Revitalising strangled fruit tree

 
I confess it, I strangled a fruit tree by tying it to its post with some
nylon string and forgetting about it.  When I remembered, this spring,
the string was embedded into the tree.  In fact it was so deeply
embedded I couldn't get it all out.  This presumably explains why the
tree has been rather lacking in vigour the last three years or so. (I
strangled another tree in the same manner, but it didn't get so deeply
embedded, and it is looking pretty well now I have released it.)  I have
seen trees looking perfectly well with barbed wire fences passing
through them - in these cases does the cambium when it obtains contact
the far side of an obstruction it meets?


Will the tree manage to heal this strangulation and reinvigorate - it
isn't noticeably more vigorous yet?


I notice that the tree has sent out a few new shoots from below the
strangulation. The lower trunk is heavily shaded so they aren't
wondrously vigorous at the moment.  Should I encourage them and aim to
remove the rest of the tree above the strangulation over the next few
years?


If it matters, it is a real quince, Cydonia oblonga (no, not a Japanese
quince).




--
echinosum

 On Fri, 2 Sep 2011 10:12:25 +0000, echinosum


Dunno about fruit trees, but when we bought this place there was a
leylandii hedge, the trees of which had been tied to stakes by nylon
rope at some time in the past. On one tree, the rope was deeply cut
into the trunk. Rather to my surprise, the trunk below the strangle
was about half the thickness of the trunk above it. The tree itself
was growing tolerably well, if a little less vigorously that its
fellows. I asked here as to why that should be. Can't remember the
reply in detail, but it was something along the lines of nutrients
moving up the tree through the core of the trunk, which wasn't
strangled, while growth hormones moved down through the cambium layer,
which was strangled (I may have that the wrong way round, but I don't
think so). Hence the trunk above the strangle grew OK, but below it,
it didn't. I assume that includes the roots, and eventually it would
have been unable to support itself.

Whether that's of any relevance or help, I leave you to decide, but I
suspect your tree will survive without much trouble.

--
 
Chris

Gardening in West Cornwall overlooking the sea.
Mild, but very exposed to salt gales

 

I once had to arrange for the unfortunate removal of a very large and
very healthy tree to make way for an office extension. The contractors
gradually got it down to a six foot bit of central trunk and then
applied the chainsaw to the bottom of that. Suddenly the saw and the
chap using it jumped a few feet. On closer examination, we discovered
that when originally planted, a substantial metal tree guard had been
put in around it. That guard was entirely inside the tree, The trunk
was about 2 feet across; the tree guard less than half of that!

Cheers
Jake
==============================================
Gardening at the dry end (east) of Swansea Bay
in between reading anything by JRR Tolkien.

www.rivendell.org.uk

 When I was a Local Councillor, I was one of those returning an area to a
Football Ground

http://www.myalbum.com/Album-Y38TI8TI-Photos-of-Other.html

:-((

The tree was removed.

--

...................................

Don't take life too seriously, you'll never get out alive.

...................................

 

I think I'd probably make two or three vertical incisions with     a
Stanley knife to cut through the cord below the bark. That would let
the tree expand as the years go by, and probably do no harm now.

My grandfather tried to sell some trees on their property to the local
timber merchant (this was in Aus, and before the war) who refused on
the grounds that as kids he and others had hammered nails into them.
My mother never told me if or how the deal progressed after that.

I've read of serious trouble with timber in the north of France:
embedded bullets and splinters from the First WW sometimes connect
with the circular saws.

--
Mike.