Bark dying around branch, should I prune or not?

ozzy

I have an olive where the bark surrounding most of a very important branch has died off leaving just a small area of bark underneath to support the branch, the branch is actually thriving even though theres really not much of a lifeline to sustain it, now when I was looking at the branch today it had shoots going here there and everywhere and I suddenly faced a dilemma ... should I prune to retain style or should I just leave it to go nuts for now.

The theory being ...

Will pruning slow down the healing process or ...

Will not pruning and leaving the plant to shoot everywhere possibly be asking to much of the small area of bark thats now supporting it and lead to the death of the branch?

What would you do?

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Vance Wood

I don't grow Olives so I can not speak from experience. But here is what I know. Some varieties of Olive tend to have areas of die back. I have seen some of them in books with massive amounts of dead wood as in a Juniper.

However what to do with this tree. I would tend to go with the Conservative approach and let the branch grow. If this die back is not natural I would try to discover what caused the problem in the first place. Disease, damage, or insect problem. Then deal with the problem if that is possible.

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kingkong

For starters good question. Bark is mostly dead on a healthy plant, it's the cambium layer underneath that is the life force. I would inspect for reasons of die back, solve that problem then try and save branch by allowing to let grow un-checked. Sometimes you can save the branch, cambium will grow and repair area and make bark some day. It is the only chance for the present, someday you might want that branch and you will wish you tried to save it, kinda like a tooth.Good luck!

Joanie

How do you know that the bark died back? What does it look like?

Joanie

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kingkong

And yes, prunning will slow the healing process if the cambium you have left can support the remaining branches and leaves. They were being slowly choked off their life support. If the living inner bark can begin to heal itself, that would be good.

phithu

Hello,

Most Olive trees have a lot of "dying" branches with very little bark left. Even the trunks suffer from this... but the trees carry on growing! All I could say is keep at least one branch tip growing to pull the sap. Then, if you wish to keep this part of the tree, you can bridge graft over the dead part to bring in some new bark. You can do this every two years to eventually rebuilt the missing part. Make sure you clean properly that area of the tree and use a could quality healing mastic.

Yours,
Philippe

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