Top or not?

[Old Monkey]

There is a large sequoia here in Boise next to the hospital. A while back they put christmas lights in it and the top caught on fire. They cut off the dead top and wired up a branch to take over as the new dominant stem. Its doing quite well and he new top almost matches.

 

[MasterBlaster]

No targets? I say leave it alone.

 

[wiley_p]

I say continue shooting it, but with a larger bore weapon.

 

[Bounce]

It is my understanding that Sequoias are pretty rot resistant, kind of like cedar. If there is no target and the top is still fairly sound, it could realistically be decades before it would break out on it's own. I would assess the condition of the dead wood and make my decision based on that. If the wood was not too punky, then I think I would just leave it. No harm, no foul right?

 

[Bounce]

Or maybe it's Redwoods that I'm thinking of that are rot resistant, not Sequoia. Gerry? Greg? You guys work with these species a lot more than I do. What do you think?

 

[Wagnaw]

At a conference last year the speaker, a dude from Canada and a dude from England, were speaking about reduction pruning veteran trees. They mentioned leaving the cut high on large reduction cuts as being superior to closer more aesthetically pleasing cuts for exactly the reason B mentioned.

I also heard somewhere the Forest Service was looking into pruning trees in managed redwood stands to replicate naturally occurring breaks and damage. The hope being that it may expedite the development of complex canopy ecosystems in forests that currently contain only excurrent, lumber grade trees in forests that are now reserved for conservation purposes.

Burnham probably knows more about that than I ever will. ...just something I heard at the ISA conference in St. Louis. I think it sounds awesome. I want to help!

 

[Knotahippie]

Looking earlier in the thread; I've yet to see a S. giganteum, here in the valley,

without widespread flagging or dead tops due to Botryosphaeria.

Also, as far as I know, Conifer stubs are part of a protection theme

and are usually retained for decades, much longer than other kinds of trees.

Part of the problem with cutting dead wood is that it's difficult to tell if

part of the trees protection zone has been removed.

Decay spreads rapidly through wall 1.

Long live stubs!

 

[squisher]

Lol, I've always fingered it's better to error on the side of the stub when it comes to deadwooding. Ever slight as it may be.

 

[Al Smith]

I've never even seen the species of tree in question .However on more than one occasion I've blowed the tops out of wind torn piney type trees with no ill results except they looked funny .Some spouted out the top .Being kind of ignorant of what kind of pines they were were though I can't name the species .To me anything with needles instead of leaves is a pine of some sort .

 

[Bermy]

I have been asked to 'top' juvenile cedars (Juniperus bermudiana) to replicate the 'self pruning' done by storms.
I did about 10 in one garden, they were all heading up with strong leaders, someone had had a go a few years before me. I did reduction cuts, to give the trees that windshorn look. It would happen naturally in several years anyway, they live right on the shore, they just wanted a headstart. Only thing is, at this younger age, the next branch or sprouts can quickly turn upward to form a new leader. Their trees are right on the edge of benefiting from a 'topping reduction'

The gnarly, twisted, more spreading canopies only seem to get that way once the tree has some age. We have a couple of endemic trees and introduced west indian trees that seem to need wind events to shake the canopies open, break some branches before they start to form typical spreading canopies, rather than upright multi leader 'domes'.

Two cedars in my garden, each at least 15 yrs old lost their tops about 8 yrs ago, one from a storm snapping it off, one from us cutting it during a storn to stop it blowing over. If you did not know what to look for you'd never know it happened, they both established a new central leader very quickly
The dead dry hard wood of our cedars becomes part of the support system of the tree, it does not rot away, remains HARD...for many, many, many years.

I didn't read the whole thread, I may be way off topic!