Garden Tips: Tree topping is tree butchering

I have had it! I just have to express my ire at the way some local trees are being pruned.

When I was shopping at a local store last week, I was particularly dismayed that their parking lot trees had been virtually denuded of branches, leaving a main trunk and a bunch of large stubby branches, if you can still call them branches. This is not the way to prune a tree; in fact, you can not even call it pruning. It should be called butchering.

While this was tragic, a stop at another store almost brought me to tears. At this store the cherry trees in the parking lot had been topped to remove most of their branches. A few cherry blossoms were bravely blooming on the few twigs that had been left behind. Why bother planting a flowering cherry tree that stays relatively small and produces beautiful flowers in the spring if you are going to hack off its branches with no regard for the tree’s beauty? It is senseless.

Of course beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but I seriously wonder about the people who perform this shameful tree trimming. They must not recognize the natural beauty of a tree or know the correct ways of pruning to maintain tree health and help restrict size. If I could talk to them, I would try to teach them the reasons this type of “pruning” is bad.

Here’s why:

1. Topping, lopping or indiscriminately hacking off tree branches leaves branch stubs, creating open wounds that do not close over. Wood decay pathogens gain access to heartwood inside of the branches and trunk through these wounds. As wood decay progresses over time, the structural integrity of the wood is compromised and the branches and trunk become weak and prone to breakage. Even a tree that appears relatively healthy can be very hazardous due to internal wood rot.

2. While the basic intent of tree butchering is to reduce a tree’s size, it can actually promote copious sprout growth from right below the topping cuts. Because all the tree’s energy is going into these sprouts, they grow vigorously and the tree will often regain and exceed its original height faster than if the tree’s height had been reduced with proper pruning or even just left alone. These shoots or “water sprouts” are crowded and weakly attached to the cut branch or trunk. As they grow, they crowd each other and are prone to breakage due to wind.

3. Less obvious but just as detrimental is the stress that topping causes to a tree. Topping removes a significant portion of a tree’s stored energy reserves, as well as reducing a tree’s crown by as much as 50 percent to 100 percent. This results in the loss of many or most of the tree’s potential leaves. Green leaves are the structures used to capture sunlight via photosynthesis and produce the carbohydrates used for tree growth and maintaining health. Topping ends up weakening a tree and making it more susceptible to attack by insects, diseases and wood decay. Topping effectively shortens the life of a tree. Repeated topping hastens its demise.

4. Topped trees are downright ugly. While this may seem a subjective reason for not topping a tree, it is not. Healthy trees that are not topped can add 10 percent to 20 percent to property value. Topped trees are viewed as a liability and a potential expense for removal or corrective pruning.

Plain and simple, topping is bad and it makes me very upset. There are ways to reduce the size of a large tree without topping. To learn the correct way to prune trees, go to the International Society of Arboriculture’s website’s Tree Owner Information and read their fact sheets “Pruning Mature Trees” and “Pruning Young Trees” found at: https://www.treesaregood.org/treeowner/pruningyourtrees

This story was originally published March 31, 2018 at 1:56 PM with the headline "Garden Tips: Tree topping is tree butchering."