Tree Injections: Your thoughts

Tree number 1 of 400 at the MCG stadium in Melbourne. It's going to be a long week..

What are you treating for and what is the reason for the high injection sites? We use the quick jet air also and really like how well it works. It is a simple and well thought out tool.
 
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  • #27
Higher injection points usually means that the tree has had multiple injections in the past and the applicator is avoiding the lower damaged/decayed (maybe? Possibly? Probably.) area.
 
The trees are treated for Elm Leaf Beetle every 2-3 years. They have been treated for maybe the last 15 years here. This was probably only 24" off the ground but I'm happy to go up to 36" with no problem. You can see on these trees where they were done over consecutive treatments so I go across and higher each time until I eventually over a cycle start at the base again.

On trees with multi stems or hollows or wounds I am happy to inject even higher to ensure take up to this part of the tree is ensured. I've been quite lucky to experiment on heights and locations and revisit the trees to assess outcome and success.

I'm interested to know if anybody else has noticed that epicormic from the main stem, possibly from wounds or bad pruning can sometimes sustain Beetle attack the following season with no ill effects to the Beetle, but the rest of the tree is unaffected. I get customers calling us telling us there are holes in leaves but its only ever the lower epicormic, not the usual epicormic higher up on branches.

Does epicormic have it's own lifeline seperate to the tree? I'm sure I remember in my biology lessons it has it's own vascular system but can't remember if it's isolated from the main vascular sytem of the tree. It makes sense for the tree to do this and explains how a poisoned tree can shoot out healthy looking epicormic while it's dying a death.
 
It was said that 20 percent of the trees in Ohio are or as be the case were ash .I'm still not done cutting down the dead ones on my little piece of real estate yet . I think they will come back as I have secondary sprouts that grew that are 12 feet high and doing well .It will be a couple of lifetimes though before anybody sees those 100 footers again if they repopulate and something else doesn't get them .
 
....Does epicormic have it's own lifeline seperate to the tree? .....

Thanks for the clarification, treemender. That all makes perfect sense with multi-year treatments. Great to have the feedback from actual field use.

On the epicormic growth, I would say that the trees are tapping into deeper stored resources. The same mechanism that allows cut and stacked logs to sprout.
 
The trees are treated for Elm Leaf Beetle every 2-3 years. They have been treated for maybe the last 15 years here. This was probably only 24" off the ground but I'm happy to go up to 36" with no problem. You can see on these trees where they were done over consecutive treatments so I go across and higher each time until I eventually over a cycle start at the base again.

On trees with multi stems or hollows or wounds I am happy to inject even higher to ensure take up to this part of the tree is ensured. I've been quite lucky to experiment on heights and locations and revisit the trees to assess outcome and success.

I'm interested to know if anybody else has noticed that epicormic from the main stem, possibly from wounds or bad pruning can sometimes sustain Beetle attack the following season with no ill effects to the Beetle, but the rest of the tree is unaffected. I get customers calling us telling us there are holes in leaves but its only ever the lower epicormic, not the usual epicormic higher up on branches.

Does epicormic have it's own lifeline seperate to the tree? I'm sure I remember in my biology lessons it has it's own vascular system but can't remember if it's isolated from the main vascular sytem of the tree. It makes sense for the tree to do this and explains how a poisoned tree can shoot out healthy looking epicormic while it's dying a death.
Interesting discussion, I'm going to have to look into that.
 
On the epicormic growth, I would say that the trees are tapping into deeper stored resources. The same mechanism that allows cut and stacked logs to sprout.[/QUOTE]

I agree stored energy, but is there a possible resource the tree compartmentalises for just epicormic growth during the development of those dormant buds. Poison can flow into the phloem and into the stored resources especially in stem drilled poisonings but I have still seen healthy epicormic living long after. Maybe it is as simple as the walls have sealed and left a perfectly good path between a root and shoot by pure fluke. My feeling on trees is rarely anything is fluke and they are cleverer than we know yet.

It seems a perfect strategy to isolate fully the dormant bud to prolong life of the plant from it's conception, but are they that perfect?
 
I suspect the answer lies in compartmentation, the static construct that allows the dynamic defense of compartmentalization to take place. Research on the specifics of just what a tree is capable of would be interesting and may already be out there. I know Dr. Kevin Smith, USFS, Northeastern, has been studying reactions of tree injections for quite awhile now.

Parenchyma cells can live for as much as 150 years in this compartmented state, even phloem mobile chemicals may not be able to make contact with some of these protected cells. Introduce an injury, such as over-pruning, could activate this resource and produce non-chemically treated growth.
 
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  • #34
I have seen epicormic growth that pushed quickly well after treatments were performed that then became symptomatic whereas the canopy remained clean. I would think that over time the sapwood would eventually become continuous again though wound wood has been shown to contain less vessels. Interesting. Would a tree with a lot of wound wood on one side of the trunk translocate a systemic pesticide more poorly to those sections of the canopy it is associated with?
 
Interesting last sentence...anecdotally I would say yes.
I have injected several very large trees that have lots of old wounds from pruning (good and bad) and injuries. I would say just on my observation that it took two seasons for the treatment to become effective.
Either that, or the infestation was initially so bad that it took a while for all the critters to be affected. They will lay their eggs in/on almost anything, the bricks of the house, the curtains, in the attics...
 
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