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Here is the Girdled Tree I teased you about. What? You were expecting more arboreal underwear? This is Pure Florida, not Victreeias Secrets.
Okay, I'll stop. This is a laurel oak that has a really poorly formed top with weak limb joints and no central leader. Plus, it is really shading my backyard pistol range. (Wouldn't you hate to be my neighbor?)
I chose to girdle this tree rather than cut it down. The purpose of girdling is to sever the phloem tubes that carry glucose from the leaves where it has been produced. If I have cut deep enough, the roots of this oak will starve to death. The leaves will drop, branches will weaken and begin to fall and the pileateds will thank me for giving them one more standing snag to hunt bugs on. Sometime this summer, during a tropical storm, the dead trunk will fall to nourish the forest soil. My shooting range will be sunny again.
I'm in no hurry.
10 comments:
I don't suppose you cut your boy's hair too, do you?
Pablo,
???...is it that bad?
No I'd love to be your neighbor, if you'd clean my gun for me after I was done borrowing your shooting range. For some reason hubby thinks I should do such things myself. The nerve! :)
Rurality,
Cool! You continue to amaze me. Uh...hubby's right though (ducking).
We all could take a lesson on recycling from nature.
Macbean,
Especially in FL.
I've done some haircuts that resemble that...
Deb,
Well it grows back...usually.
The hair or the tree? \
On a serious note...do you worry about the timing of the tree falling, or do people just avoid the area during a storm or...seems a little dangerous to me, but then I don't have machete weilding teens in my forest, either.
Hick,
It's not near anything it could hurt and 99.9% of the time, nobody is near it.
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