Our Services: Topping

Topping is the removal of vertical leader stems on large trees. Topping often leads to top rot and long cracks. Lightening often gets blamed. People often top trees because they feel that the tree will become hazardous, but topping greatly increases the hazard risk of the tree.

When treetops are removed, roots begin to starve. Topping stimulates excessive sprouting. The sprouts are unsightly and hazardous. Topping trees under power lines cause more sprouts to grow back in the lines faster, Excessive sprouting is a sign of low energy reserves.

Topping, sprouts and cavities lead to dangerous hazard conditions, Sprouts have a very weak union on trunks. Be on guard for sprouts that are growing rapidly in a horizontal direction.

In this progressive age of high technology and easy access to information, it is quite possible that we may soon see the practice of tree topping disappear. It has been scientifically proven, and becoming common knowledge that topping is detrimental to a tree's health, and often has the opposite effect of hat the homeowner is attempting to achieve.

Tree topping is the misguided practice of heading back limbs in an attempt to reduce the tree's natural production of twigs and leaves in order to lessen yard maintenance, control a tree's overall size, reduce the danger of large overhanging limbs and often, sadly enough to incorrectly care for an aging and beloved vertical landscape. Many homeowners' have not yet been educated on the subject and look to professional advice on such matters. Others simply do what their neighbors do.

The effects of topping include: the decay of large unhealed wounds, insect infestation, sunscald to the bark, and in some cases, death of the tree. Those that do survive treatment (and many species rejuvenate quite quickly) return to the original size, but have smaller limbs with weaker branch attachment, resulting in increased leaf and twig production.

The proper procedure to reduce leaf and twig production, as well as to restrict a tree's size (wind sail appearance), is to thin it with proper pruning techniques, such as drop crotching, too much of the tree's producing mass. A large overhanging limb can be cabled and save the owner the expense of someone else's return to remove the diseased or infected tree. Of course, the real beauty is in subtlety. A trained arborist will leave an old tree looking as if it had a manicure, not its hands removed.