Talking Trees with Davey Tree

Pruning Spring Flowering Trees

May 06, 2021 The Davey Tree Expert Company Season 1 Episode 17
Talking Trees with Davey Tree
Pruning Spring Flowering Trees
Show Notes Transcript

Robert Dallmann from Davey's Chesapeake, Maryland, office talks about how to properly prune spring flowering trees on your property, as well as how an arborist can help.

In this episode we cover:

  • Flowering trees and when to prune (0:43)
  • Pruning - an art or a science? (5:08)
  • Crape Myrtle (6:35)
  • Bradford Pear (7:47)
  • Other flowering trees (8:52)
  • Right tree right place (9:47)
  • Doug's Crabapple tree (14:46)
  • Timing when pruning trees (16:12)
  • Trees aging (18:56)
  • Isaac Newton's apple tree (19:33)
  • The craft of pruning - right tools and sharp tools (20:39)
  •  Why trees are important to Rob (23:36)

To find your local Davey office, check out our find a local office page to search by zip code.

To learn more about pruning trees in the spring, read our blog, Pruning Trees in Spring - Is it ok to do?
To learn more about when your flowering trees should bloom, read our blog, When do Flowering Trees Bloom in Spring, Including Fruit Trees.

Connect with Davey Tree on social media:
Twitter: @DaveyTree
Facebook: @DaveyTree
Instagram: @daveytree
YouTube: The Davey Tree Expert Company
LinkedIn: The Davey Tree Expert Company

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Doug Oster: Welcome to the Davey Tree Expert Company's podcast Talking Trees. I'm your host, Doug Oster. Each episode showcases one of Davey's certified arborists sharing advice with everyone about caring for your trees and landscapes. We'll talk about everything from introduced pest, seasonal tree care, deer damage, how to make your trees thrive, and much, much more. Tune in every Thursday to learn more because here at the Talking Trees podcast, we know trees are the answer.

This week, I'm joined by Robert Dallmann. He is a district manager in Maryland in the Annapolis region. We're going to talk all about pruning spring-flowering trees. Now, Rob, oftentimes when I talk to the experts from Davey Tree, we're talking about pruning during dormancy, but if I was to prune my dogwood in the fall, I'd be cutting off some of the flowers. I guess when I'm thinking spring pruning, that's what I'm thinking. Is that right? Am I thinking about it the right way? Are there other things to consider here?

Robert Dallmann: Well, I suppose it totally depends on what the consideration for pruning is. In my area, you've mentioned dogwoods, we have a lot of crape myrtles which are a non-native flowering specimen from actually Korea from Asia. Frankly, I think that they might be deemed invasive at some point, but dogwood is a better specimen in my opinion. People have gotten into some cultural things. What I hear, for instance, to use crape myrtles as an example, is that they have gotten too big and that they're too close to the house or that they shouldn't have gotten that big, they shouldn't have planted it there.

I hear that all the time about crape myrtles. I normally do, if you're talking about a flowering tree, suggest something like a dogwood or actually a deciduous magnolia. Then when you're talking about pruning those types of trees, the question is, why are you pruning it? With crape myrtles, usually, people want them to be smaller. Then they also want to enjoy the flowers. Crape myrtles will flower on new growth, so they think that if you keep it a certain size, and we've termed it "crape murder", actually, as a slang, which I still discourage that, crape myrtles will come back from it. They'll spring out all these sprouts, all this dense sprout growth.

It does create a column of dead wood around where those sprouts grow. It's not a good arboricultural practice. It's not good for the plant at all, but it does give you that heavy summer flower, and also can help manage the size of the specimen. Now, with a dogwood or a deciduous flowering magnolia, or in the Maryland area more along the shrub side, we see a lot of rhododendrons, if you prune those in the winter and you're pruning from the tips back like we do with crape myrtles, then you will ruin the flower, because the specimen will have to start from scratch essentially, build new buds, create that energy from the beginning.

Whereas in the fall, they've already stored that starch and they've started to form their flower buds. Those are kept over the winter. If you're doing a top-down pruning based on size or something like that, then you're going to diminish the return on the flowers. The way I look at pruning in general, and with trees, we're always pretty much looking at a snapshot. Unless it's something that's a vigorous sprout or something that is almost like a large perennial like a shrub, like a crape myrtle, for instance, I really consider just proper pruning where we're taking off dead wood, making proper cuts back to barrier zones, and not removing more than 30% of living tissue.

If you're in that 30% or under on a dogwood, a crab apple, any of these other-- Spring hawthorns are in bloom right now, cherry trees, of course, the cherries of the Tidal Basin which bloomed a few weeks early this week or this month, or actually last month this year. Those are all trees that if you're just sending them out and doing more of good healthful pruning for proper structure and proper form, maybe getting an individual limb off like that, with proper pruning, you shouldn't really get a noticeable difference in the number of flowers because you shouldn't be affecting the look of the tree that much.

Doug: To me pruning, is art and science. From your standpoint though as an expert, does that make sense to you or not, or is it science?

Robert: Actually, I look at it as a craft. That's just something I've picked up in my readings and the difference-- When they talk about art and science, art can be anything you can take. We make jokes sometimes that you break a bottle on the ground, and that's your art. Now you can sell it as a non-fungible token for millions of dollars, which is potentially possible. That is true about art. Art really has no bounds. There's a difference with it being a craft is that you have the tree, it's a living thing. That goes back to what I was saying about the crape myrtles.

When you're trying to shrink something, or essentially when you get into a forced, a very humanistic reason for pruning, of essentially a forced prune that doesn't take the science into account, the biology of the tree, then you end up with something that's basically mutilated. Each arborist can go approach the tree and should have a basic framework for how the trees are, an outline essentially, that is the form and biology of the tree.

Doug: You've covered a lot of ground there, and I've got a lot of stuff I want to ask you about. Let's just use crape myrtle as that example. I think it's interesting how you talk about a crape myrtle because I'm just a little bit further north than you and we have a lot of trouble growing a crape myrtle, therefore, people want to grow it. [laughs]

Robert: Sure, of course. They're going to hybridize them and breed them just for that purpose.

Doug: Exactly. It's so funny that you're looking at the future of a crape myrtle as possibly being an invasive.

Robert: Yes. To me, it's reminiscent of the Bradford Pear. I see a lot of the same attributes in the pruning, what has become accepted pruning, where Bradford Pears also will get topped or reduced. Then when they're topped, they can just sprout out. I mean, you can cut them down to the ground and they'll regrow. That's the same thing with crape myrtles. The same thing there where you have the nice flower, but people don't really appreciate them outside of that. Bradford Pears are appreciated for their flower and maybe a little bit for the fall color.

Now everybody understands that they break apart very easily, and they've escaped the landscape so to speak, and that you find them growing on their own on the side of the road. That's where, with pruning, if you're going outside of those proper pruning parameters, those basic rules, the framework for the science, then you're risking adverse side effects, the least of which being it's going to sprout out and grow from dormant buds all around what is now a decaying column on the inside. Then you'll just have more congestion, more issues in the long run.

You'll also get, perhaps, denser flowering for that next season, but you've caused more problems than you've solved. Eventually, to me, in my opinion, it just leads down the road of that the tree is going to be cut down before too long. With most other flowering specimens, hardwoods, and more along the line of your shrubs, like something on the edge of a dogwood or a magnolia.

Those are my go-to's, the deciduous magnolia is like the Janes, the Saucers. We have a lot of varieties with different shades of flowers. They flower very early in the spring, which is the opposite of a crape myrtle, but they have a similar form and structure size-wise. They don't get as big and they don't grow as rapidly as crape myrtles. You can control, with some structural pruning, some redirection, and some minor shaping, their size is a lot easier than you can a crape myrtle. They're more of a natural native.

Doug: It seems to me that it comes back to choosing the right size plant for the right place when it comes to pruning. They can't see you, but I can see you. As soon as I see that, you smile, how much time do you spend going to a property? It's every other one that says, it's on the window. It's over the window. It's over the deck. It's here, it's there, because it was planted in the wrong place originally, because it's just a small little thing, and you think, "Oh well, looks good here", but didn't take into account that it's going to be 30-feet tall or 20-feet tall, or whatever it is.

Robert: Yes. A lot of people tend to have a bad understanding ending of size and dimensions because it's in 3D. I think people and even when you draw, I see a lot of landscape architects do this, "I'm going to put this crape myrtle right here between the patio and the pool ,and it's going to shade the porch perfectly, but not get flower." People don't think about the flowers in the pool for instance, or on the patio. When I come to them, usually 10, 15, 20 years down the road, I'm usually solving some type of problem that has to do with size or threat, or some other hindrance, something that's obnoxious.

I hear a lot of people will say, "I love trees, but just not this one." When you talk about size, the label they give you-- if they say a red maple is going to be 30 to 60 feet or 40 to 60, you and live 60 to 80 years, we know that there are trees, there are maple trees that are 120 years old and 120-feet tall. That's like a specimen that they're taking into account the average, which means a lot of trees died, which is pretty typical of planted trees. I think people need to either keep in mind, for instance, if you want a flowering tree, you're going to have to deal with the flowers. If it's a crape myrtle, it's going to be flowering from June through September, that's prime pool season.

Either you're going to have to get your son or daughter, or pay somebody to clean that pool, or maybe consider another specimen. Same thing along the lines of a crab apple. I've mentioned saucer magnolias, there's star magnolias. Jane magnolia has a beautiful, big flower, great fragrance in the spring. They last usually just a week or two, like crab apples, great fragrance. They came into flower on Thursday and they're almost done on Tuesday. I think people have to consider trees to be more along the same lines of pets.

Jerry Seinfeld has that great joke where he says, "If aliens came down and saw dogs, people walking their dogs, well, it looks like dogs are walking the people and we're picking up their waste and carrying it in the little bag until we get to the next spot where we can deposit the waste." People seem to get really sick of raking leaves or sweeping flowers out of the way. That's where stop and smell the flowers. You have to take that, a crab apple is only going to be in flower for a couple of days. A Magnolia is only going to be in flower for a couple days, but it takes an incredible amount of energy for the tree to manufacture those flowers.

That's a reproduction process. It's really a beautiful thing that has taken the tree, that single specimen years, not to mention we talk about bees or wind pollinating, or where is its mate? Does the tree have a mate across the street or any of those things? I think trees fall into the background. People only think about them in regards to usually how they are causing problem. Now, some of your audience is probably going to be on my side of things there, which is great but still I find master gardeners who look at things almost more like along the lines of forestry. It's what is this tree done for lately in some regard.

Doug: I love that analogy of your trees should be like your pets. The crab apple, I've got a crab apple, and was here when we got here, over 20 years ago, it's outside. When you're standing at the kitchen sink, you're looking at that crab apple. A pine tree, about three years ago behind it, fell on it, cracked it pretty good. The guys from Davey came and took a look at it. They got the pine tree off and everything. We sat there and looked at that crab apple. I told them, I said, "I love this crab apple. I know that it has fungal issues. I know that it is not going to bloom for long, but when it does bloom, there's just something about it."

He took a look at it, and he said, "We'll tell you what we'll do, we'll make a cut here. We'll make a cut there." Now three years later, it's starting to find the right form. I look at that crab apple like a treasured pet, even though it has its problems. When I've talked to arborists before, a lot of people will just say that crab apple, because you get fungal issues and this and that. I don't know. When you can have an expert come to the house, and take a look at that, and understand how I'm feeling about a tree, we're on the same page. Three years later, hey, that crab apple looks great.

Robert: That's where when I'm looking at a tree on somebody's property, I'm looking at just a snapshot in time. I'm looking at it in the vacuum of whatever circumstances. Like today, it's a beautiful sunny day. If it hasn't rained in the past three days, I may not know that there's a pool of water underneath of that tree whenever it does rain, or anything like that. The fact that the eve of the house shades the bulk of the tree for most of the day, so it's going to be more susceptible to leaf disease there. I really try to consider time and the grand scheme of things, whenever I'm looking at a tree and whenever I'm pruning it.

With flowering trees, you do have to consider that a lot of the times they have fungal leaf disease, and they usually have sensitivities. That's for a variety of reasons. One of the main reasons is flowering trees typically have been developed either for their flower or for their fruit. They do require additional human intervention. An apple tree in the wild will have apples on just that, whatever is the second year growth, which usually is going to be high up in the canopy to a certain extent. There you have, again, if you have an apple tree that's growing between two maples in a somewhat wooded environment, you might have an apple tree that's a 30-foot twig basically.

Whereas you put that same tree in the middle of a sunny place with no impediments around it, and basically if your objective is either flowers or apples, you're going to get a lot different performance out of it, and treat it a lot differently as well. In general a crab apple, a flowering cherry, something like that apple, Hawthorne, trees that will suffer plums also, they're all pretty much in the same families there. You're either in the cherry family or the apple family. You're going to need to keep them somewhat thin to allow water to drop off of the leaves, to allow air to move through to dry the leaves off, and also light in.

It'll keep the form and structure of the tree looking nice, and that'll eliminate some of those problems with leaf disease, and also give you a nice flowering tree throughout generations. Basically speaking as a tree gets older just like anything, just like your old dog or your grandpa, you get a little bit more hair in your nostrils, or you get more gray hair. Trees, when they get older, they start to get funky. If something falls on them or there was a cold snap one year, or whatever else, those things, those blemishes can become part of the architecture of the tree, and give it character.

When we look at trees that are hundreds of years old, like for instance, actually, the apple tree that they say is Isaac Newton's apple tree is still over there where he sat below it and discovered gravity. Again, they say this is that tree. It's 300-some years old. Somewhere along the line, it uprooted, and somebody left it. They didn't want to cut down or cut up Isaac Newton's apple tree. They left it and now, it's basically almost looks like two trees. It's got one part of it that is on its side, basically laying on the ground, and then the basic scion, the new sprouts that took up ownership of the life of the tree. There's plenty of examples of stuff like that. We do that with the bonsai again, or topiaries where you can use the rules of nature and make something into maybe more along the lines of an art project.

Doug: Let's say that a homeowner has started to understand the craft of pruning. Talk about the importance of the right tools and sharp tools.

Robert: Yes. Typically you want to use something that's going to cut rather than tear. What that means is obviously sharper. Sharper is better. Even more if you can make a cut when it's smaller with a hand pruner versus a hand saw, that'll be better. If you can use a pull clip or a loppers that is going to leave a clean cut with the barrier zone that doesn't tear at the bark, then that's better.

That's where foundational pruning when something is younger, and doing some of that structural pruning, some of that shaping, redirecting as it's going little by little, rather than a big "we just noticed that this big limb was over our pool" or something along those lines. A lot of times you see stuff after a house is built. You, a new owner, for instance, that's pretty common, has new objective.

Doug: When you're using a pruning saw and you've got a decent sized branch, let's say two inches thick and 10 feet long, you can't just cut at that barrier zone. You want to cut out first, is that right?

Robert: Right. That's where logistically, structurally you can start out by leaving a stub. Make a cut so that it doesn't tear down the bar, make your undercut. Pretty much everybody who has any business pruning knows about the three-cut method. Make an undercut, make an overcut, and then make your finishing cut. More so than that would be to try to avoid making those cuts as much as possible. Doing a little bit of pruning with hand pruners the first 3 years of its life, rather than waiting 3 years and or more, and then saying, "I don't like where this branch is going now."

Again, if you're still following those rules of proper pruning and you're not taking too much off of the tree, and you're not ripping cuts, and you're cutting back the barrier zones, you should be pretty much good to go, and especially that's all relative. If you take a two-inch branch off of a 25-foot red maple, it's not going to be a problem, but a 2-inch branch on a dog wood, that that could be like the majority of the tree.

Doug: That's great stuff. Now I want to get into a little bit of how you got into this. Why are trees your thing?

Robert: Why are trees important to me? I don't know. I grew up in Wisconsin, and we always spent time-- I lived in country neighborhood, rural neighborhood, idyllic for semi forested and then farm fields basically. It's not like I was necessarily-- My dad was a printer. My mom was a nurse. We were not avid outdoorsmen, but we did spend a week in Northern Wisconsin every year that I was growing up. I've always enjoyed climbing trees. I've been climbing trees since I was probably 5 years old, probably maybe younger than that. There's a story, I guess you could cut it out if you want to. I climbed up our eastern red cedar tree at my place in Pewaukee, Wisconsin. My grandmother came out looking for me and I was on the roof, and I was urinating into the gutter.

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I've always liked being around trees, and the adventure of climbing them. I remember I did a book report on the world's tallest trees. I think I've always been attracted to how big they grow and that thing, and just being around the natural. It's infinitely more complex, but it's like it's all happening on its own time frame, nature. It just is calming in that regard. I actually studied psychology. I bounced around doing different things in my transitional years where I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do. I got a degree in psychology because my ultimate motive was that I wanted to help people. I wanted to help the world.

Once I got into tree care, which I was working for a guy who was an aggressive boss so to say. He didn't yell at me too much, but yelled at all my coworkers pretty much all the time. When we were chasing storms, he was putting on spikes and pruning trees with spikes on, climbing them and topping them. I didn't know the difference at the time. That's not good. Those things are good. When I found out it was a way to make a living, then essentially I found a good company to get in with, and went and got some books by Dr Alex Shigo about proper pruning, basically the rest history.

I'm a person that I have a lot of passion and pride in what I do. The first time I tried to prune a holly tree, it was miserable. I remember saying I hate hollies. As it was asked upon me to do it several times, and I got better at it, and then I started to get the feedback from the customer. Once I mastered how to do it, and when the customer comes out and says that is an art, you do take a lot of pride in that. Or similarly, when somebody's crab apple is dealing with leaf disease all the time and they just want it to be a little bit healthier.

When you can take somebody's dogwood, that's been struggling with anthracnose for years and years, and years, and it maybe was planted for their father or something like that, and maybe be able to turn it around, and help it out health-wise. Tree work is something that a lot of people, they value it in their landscape. They would like to do it successfully, but they don't have necessarily know-how or the tools. I always tell people there's plenty of videos on YouTube of accidents happening, and it's better left for a professional to do it. We can definitely help out in that regard.

Doug: I do have to ask, how did grandma react?

Robert: It's been a lifelong story. My grandma, she was like, "Robert, get down from there." She thought I was crazy. Little she know that I would be using that tree climbing skill as a way to make a living 25 years later.

Doug: All right, Rob, I'm going to leave it right there. I'm telling you what, that is great information about pruning. Now I don't really have to worry about trying to plan a crape Myrtle and trying to make a volume up here. I don't want anything to do with a crape myrtle. Thanks so much, Rob.

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Robert: All right. I appreciate talking with you. Appreciate the opportunity.

Doug: Tune in every Thursday to the talking trees podcast from the Davey Tree Expert company, I'm your host, Doug Oster. Next week, it's two guests for the price of one, as an expert from Davey Tree combines forces with an arborist from Miami Beach to discuss the importance of urban forestry. As Always, we like to remind you on the Talking Trees Podcast, trees are the answer.

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