oh my

no comment on that..

but no sealing.. odds are.. you will trap stuff in and cause rot faster.. than if just left open to dry ...

if it were mine.. i would cut it to the ground.. and let one sprout come back

or get rid of it ...

but .. alas.. its your experiment ... enjoy

ken

I would chop it down and plant something else this fall. I am sorry for the loss of your tree.

Yikes... at the very least, try again with the bolting, if you can't get that flush, then give up and cut it back below the split.

Why would one "try again with the bolting"? The thing ain't gonna magically be OK once brought back together, if that would even be possible. Redbuds are short-lived trees anyway.

Trying to seal seal the would would definitely NOT be a good idea.

If you're willing to experiment, wait until dormancy and cut down to ground level. As Ken mentioned, chances are that the tree will sprout back from the roots. You'll probably want to choose one or two suckers and remove the remainder.

It might not, Brandon, but it would at least have a better shot if they could get it flush.

Not everyone wants to throw things away when something bad happens. That's one of the problems with America today. There's a chink? Throw it away, get a new one.

Redbuds are indeed short-lived but if you are partial to this one, this is a situation where calling a professional arborist might be a good idea. We had an arborist out yesterday overseeing the cabling in one of our big oaks, and he was talking about the post-storm damage that they had repaired recently, involving bolting cracked trees back together. Admittedly, he was discussing oaks, which are much longer-lived, but it is your tree and you are the one that should decide how you feel about it. Cabling above the bolting would take some of the stress off that crack, too.

I have also had good luck having redbuds grow back after cutting flush to the ground - it is amazing how fast a sucker will grow when there is a full-sized root system underground to support and nourish it.

Gardening is an inexact science with a fair degree of art thrown in. You are living the experiment!

Famartin,

I don't consider coppicing the same as throwing the tree away. The tree will probably go on living. The top part can be used for firewood, ground up for mulch, or whatever.
------------------------------------------------------------
Toronado,

I sure hope your comment about recommending rubberized spray-on undercoating was just a joke. If not, it has to be one of the absolute worst recommendations I have seen on this forum. I would hope that even the average gardener, with a passing interest in trees, would know better than this!

Nah. I have always been on the fence and have now been brought to the other side so I politely disagree. This is after slicing a few trees with defects and watching some treated ones grow. Every day when I go outside I am also faced with a decade old painted pine bench outlasting a formerly solid larger ash trunk.

It just has slowely worked on me. My apologies but I now firmly believe large open cuts should be treated. With what I am less sure but have seen the rubber spray work.

Tornado3800, I think the group that maintains the grounds and plantings at Michigan State would agree with you. Perhaps things are different now, since I haven't been on that campus for at least a decade, but when I was a student there about 25 years ago, there were a significant number of tree and some shrub specimens across the campus that had major work done on them by the grounds dept and/or the forestry dept, who used the campus as a living lab for teaching. Numerous trees up there had been repaired in various ways. My first year in the dorm was spent looking into the crown of a large American Elm that had been held together with bolts and cables not unlike the bolts in the OP's photo, but much tighter. Not far away from it and still within view was a beautiful mature Tulip Tree that bloomed in the spring and I got to see it, since the academic year ran into the 2nd week of June back then.

It's hard to believe that any Tree Forum regular participant would recommend would dressing for this application. It's like recommending tree topping or the escalation of Bradford Pear planting.

Here is a small random sampling of what those who know about tree dressing/wound sealant have to say:

International Society of Arboriculture: "Research has shown that the common wound dressings do not inhibit decay, do not prevent insect entry, and do not bring about faster wound closure. In fact, many of the commonly used dressings slow wound closure."

Alex L. Shigo: "We should not rely on medicines and wound dressings to correct problems we create. It is not so important to start new practices as it is to STOP many old practices that do more harm than good." ...and... "Microorganisms have their picnics and parties under wound dressings."

Perdue University: "Dressings may actually harbor disease organisms rather than exclude them. It has also been determined that wound dressing slows the wound callusing (often called healing) process, rather than speeding it up."

Linda Chalker-Scott: "Covering wounds with traditional sealants inhibits oxidative processes, which in turn will reduce callus formation and subsequent compartmentalization." ...and...
"Wound dressings do:
⢠seal in moisture and decay
⢠sometimes serve as a food source for pathogens
⢠prevent wound wood from forming
⢠inhibit compartmentalization
⢠eventually crack, exposing the tree to pathogens
Wound dressings do not:
⢠prevent entrance of decay organisms
⢠stop rot"

The comments made on a previous thread about the triple-trunked elm with a central cavity made me think about the issue of wound and cavity treatment. While a bad analogy, no doubt, it is true that a wound covered with a Bandaid of heals more slowly due to trapped moisture, and the true could certainly be true for trees.

I would suggest that an alternative to a wound coating in these circumstances might be a wound shield made of some type of impervious material, perhaps sheet aluminum, that could be cut and fitted to shape and would sit relatively loosely over the wound, shed water and debris, but still allows air flow into and around the wound.

Have one in my yard that split similarly; I augered a hole all the way through, put a length of all-thread through, and with a nut and washer on each end, pulled it back together - closer apposition than the OP achieved. 10+ years ago.
Applied no sealants or fillers. Wound has callused over.
In a perfect world, it might not have been the best choice - but it worked.
I'm well aware that redbuds are a relatively short-lived species; this was a nice enough specimen that I was willing to take a chance on it.

I know that the hardware is there; in all likelihood, I'll be the one cutting that tree down and disposing of the trunk when it finally gives up the ghost. Even if it's not me cutting it down - it's highly unlikely that anyone would encounter the hardware with their saw - it's not a 'timber' species, or even something that somebody would be inclined to use for firewood.

Whacking it to the ground is certainly an option - and if you can choose one or more good sprouts, you can do some appropriate pruning early in life to eliminate narrow crotches with the propensity toward having included bark and diminished likelihood of disastrous splits

I apologize if my post of "chopping it down" came across as superficial. It wasn't intended to be. I was going by personal experience of my next door neighbor who had a Willow tree ( I know Willows are in a category all their own and have nothing to do with Redbuds) and he had brackets, or whatever they're called, holding it up. A few years ago one of the trees gigantic branches came crashing down across my backyard. It could've seriously injured someone. It was huge! I was privately pissed at him that he would keep a tree like that, knowing it was fragile and I felt it was irresponsible. I didn't say that to him of course, I can't tell someone what they can and can't do with their own property on their own land they pay taxes on. When he apologized for what happened I told him he could leave the branch there as long as he needed since he wanted to cut it up for his firewood. It took him all day to cut it up into chunks. He ended up cutting the rest of the tree down since he saw how dangerous the situation was. I guess I just wanted to explain where I was coming from. It's not about cutting something down because it isn't pretty anymore, it's about the usefulness and safety of the tree. Ymmv.