Just saw the before and after on a 5-year-old oak I pruned back in March

I went back to a property in Austin yesterday where I did a pretty heavy reduction on a live oak that had storm damage. The tree was a mess with all those torn limbs and bad angles. Five months later the canopy is filling in completely even and the homeowner said they got compliments from three neighbors. Anyone else ever have a prune job turn out way better than you expected?

3 comments

3 Comments

dylan_ward1d ago

Did you ever consider it might be the way the tree reacts to that stress though? I've noticed live oaks here in Austin sometimes bounce back almost too well after a hard cut. Like they go into survival mode and push out growth faster than normal. Five years from now you might start seeing included bark or weak branch unions forming right where that new growth took off. Not trying to bash your work, just saying trees do weird things when you trigger that response. I'd keep an eye on those new limbs in a couple years when they get heavier.

kellyallen1d ago

Oh absolutely, yes. I had a maple in my backyard that I cut back pretty hard after a storm, and within a season it was putting out so much new growth I thought I'd done something wrong. But by year three, one of those big new limbs just split right off during a light wind storm. You could see the bark had grown inwards at the joint, exactly like you're describing. They get top heavy and the wood never really fuses right.

shane_wilson1d ago

A 2018 study from Cornell actually tracked 40 maple trees that were cut back hard, and the ones with included bark at the joints had a 60% failure rate within five years. The tree's natural response is to push out fast, weak growth rather than taking the time to build strong unions (which is why those storm-triggered cuts often cause more problems than they solve). If you look at any properly pruned tree, the cuts are small and frequent, not big and sudden like storm damage tends to be.