Cedar Elm Wounds

malhomme

I have a slant-style cedar elm that I've been having some difficulty with. I removed three branches several years ago and the wounds have never healed. I have used razor-sharp tools to re-open the wounds, applied cut paste, fertilized like a NY sewer and still not the slightest bit of healing.

The tree is otherwise in very healthy shape. I let it grow untouched every summer.

Anyone had luck healing cedar elms?

Thanks,
Jim

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OKbonsai

From what I have heard it takes a while for them to heal. I just got a couple from a friend and I cut one way back, I guess I'll see first hand how long it takes. I hope it doesn't take several years.
Frank

rockm

They don't take a long time to heal. They heal very quickly, if you lay off the cut paste and allow the shoots that will arise at the cut site to grow for a season or two. Also helps to have them in deeper containers while training them. I have a 3 in diameter trunk chop that has been healing nicely. It will be a total of about four years to cover a pretty large area. Large limb removal can be enhanced with this and other species by undercutting the limb --cutting a wedge halfway through underneath the branch to be removed--waiting a season, then removing th eentire limb the following year. Leaving the limb in place accelerates the healing of the undercut...

RedPine

Where I currently live the place was built in the 1999-2000 year,the outer area was brush cut for a fence to run the lines of the property.There is about a thousand 1"-4" thick cedar and winged(flat branched) elms that were cut down to about 10" tall,growing freely in the ground you can still clearly see where the trunks had been cut down.

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rockm

"here I currently live the place was built in the 1999-2000 year,the outer area was brush cut for a fence to run the lines of the property.There is about a thousand 1"-4" thick cedar and winged(flat branched) elms that were cut down to about 10" tall,growing freely in the ground you can still clearly see where the trunks had been cut down."

You might go out an collect some of them and use them for bonsai . They are very easy to collect, as they recover quickly from sever handling. I've dug 60 year old cedra elms, removed all their roots in Nov. and shipped them across the country. They sulked until the following June, but resprouted and took off after that. .They are extrememly tough and vigorous.

They can be root pruned of all their feeder roots and recover. They can be top pruned extremely hard. Trunk chops will close in a few years in a container--depending on root run and wintering conditions--some shelter is necesssary the first couple of years after collection.

Established collected trees will heal very quickly, in my experience. The wound from removing a branch a half inch in diameter will close just as quickly or more quickly than Chinese elm. I have both as bonsai. I have kept cedar elm in containers for over nine years now.

The lack of healling could have alot to do with the cut paste. Rewounding the edges of the cut surface IN THE SPRING, and allowing them to go unsealed will probably help.

malhomme

Why unsealed, Rockm?

Also, I didn't have shoots sprout from around the cut. The cut areas have been pretty barren. The tree is in a large container with celebrity mix (akadama, etc.). Growth is vigorous, but the wounds just won't callous a bit. Not even a millimeter! My Chinese elms, cut at the same time, have healed over quite well.

Cheers,
Jim

OKbonsai

4 years sounds like a long time to me.

rockm

"Why unsealed, Rockm?

Also, I didn't have shoots sprout from around the cut. The cut areas have been pretty barren"

Cedar elm usually sprouts thickly from cut sites and from pruning. That's what makes them good material. There could be other things going on For instance, are you cutting back the top or other areas of the tree at the same time you're hoping to have the wound heal? Is there any growth near the cut site at all--above below, within four inches? If there is let it alone and let it grow. Also, healing can be accelerated if you just let the tree alone unpruned for the growing season. This takes some patience, but it usually works.

Also, I'd avoid stark soil like akadama for this species. Cedar elm loves water and moist soil that doesn't dry out. It lives in areas near rivers, in low lying areas too. Fast draining soil may not provide it with either the constant moisture it requires (not soggy, but moist) nor the nutrients it needs. Fast draining soil leaches out fertlizer pretty quickly.

These are only suggestions as to what might be going on. A cedar elm that doesn't push new growth or buds at hard purning sites, nor heal wounds is an exception in my experience with them.

"4 years sounds like a long time to me."

Depends on the wound size and what you think is a "long" time. A large chop wounds--over an inch or two--take a number of years to close on most trees. BC take three or four years to close large trunk chops (sometimes more, depending on the size of the trunk that was removed) korean and carolina hornbeam can take a decade or longer to close the same sized wound in a container.

I would also note that you don't want a wound to necessarily close quickly. A fast healing wound that closes in a year usually is accompanied by thick rolling scar tissue that ruins the chop work. Chops on some species, like beech, are done in late fall or early winter and not spring for this reason.

OKbonsai

Well I guess I would say that to me 4 years is a long time. No disrespect to you but I can't think of anything that I have cut back 4 years ago that hasn't healed by now. I think it's because of the way I manage my material. Here are three pictues of a trident that I dug in 1/05 and worked on 2/28/05. First picture is what it looked like before I started cutting, second after cutting off branches and the third taken this last week 1/06. All this work done on a tree that had been in the ground 15 years, dug up, completely bare rooted, shoved in a trailer and hauled a 1,000 miles, root pruned and potted in a plastic container. I was advised against working on it so soon but had convidence it would be ok. This will finish healing this year. I would have to add that the water elms that I collected are very slow and show very little healing and most likely will take more than 4 years to heal.
F

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