Topping is a practise only used by non-professionals by people who do not know what they are doing. Topping is the removal of a tree’s crown without the use of correct pruning methods. Many people mistakenly “top” trees because they grow into utility wires, interfere with views or sunlight, or simply grow so large that they worry the landowner.

 

The topping process is often self-defeating and research shows that topped trees actually grow more over a 5 year period, compared to trees that have been pruned properly. Topped trees are ugly, bushy and the weakly attached limbs usually grow back higher than the original.

5 Reasons Not to Top Your Tree

 

1. Topping Won’t Work

 

Topping trees doesn’t keep trees small.  After a deciduous tree is topped, its growth rate increases.  If you succeed in stopping a trees growth with topping, you have killed it.

 

2.  Topping Is Dangerous to the Tree.

 

Topping is the most serious injury you can inflict upon your tree.  Topping creates a hazardous tree in four ways:

 

• Topping Rots Your Tree: Topping opens the tree up to an invasion of rotting organisms.  A tree can defend itself from rot when side branches are removed, but it has a hard time walling off the pervasive rot to which a topping cut subjects it.  Rotted individual limbs-or the entire tree-may fail as a result, often years later.
• Topping Starves Your Tree.  Very simply, a tree’s leaves manufacture its food.  Repeated removal of the tree’s leaves-its food source-literally starves the tree.  This makes it susceptible to secondary diseases such as root rot.
• Topping Creates Weak Limbs.  New limbs made from the sucker or shoot regrowth are weakly attached and break easily in wind or snow storms-even many years later when they are large and heavy.  A regrown limb never has the structural integrity of the original.
• Topping Creates Extra Wind Resistance. The thick growth of suckers or sprouts resulting from topping makes the tree top-heavy and more likely to catch the wind.  This increases the chance of blow-down in a storm.

 

3.  Topping Is Ugly.

 

The sight of a topped tree is offensive to many people.  Arborists consider the topping of some trees a criminal act, since a tree’s 90-year achievement of natural beauty can be destroyed in a couple of hours.

 

Topping also destroys the winter silhouette of a tree.  The re-growth of suckers or shoots will bloom poorly, if at all.  Some trees will re-establish themselves after many years-but by then they will be the same size as before. Many topped trees are considered a total loss.

 

4.  Topping Is Expensive

 

A topped tree must be re-topped every few years-and eventually must be removed when it dies or the owner gives up.  Each time a branch is cut; numerous long, skinny young shoots (called suckers or watersprouts) grow rapidly back to replace it.  They must be cut but they always re-grow the next year making the job exponentially more difficult. 

 

5.  Topping Can Make You Look Bad

 

Topping can make you appear to be a cruel or foolish person. Topped trees also lack natural beauty and may reduce your property values. Also, a topped tree can become hazardous and cause property damage, making it a liability.

 

Correct pruning techniques such as crown reduction, thinning and lifting can remove excessive growth without the problems that topping creates. In addition, many arborists say that topping is the worst thing you can do for the health of a tree. Topping reduces the tree’s food-making ability and causes the tree more susceptible to insects and disease.

 

The appearance of a properly pruned tree is like a good haircut: hardly noticeable at first glance.

 

Douglas Fir Tree Care are able to advise and help with your tree problems, for your free consultation or advice please feel free to contact us by email

 

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