Wounds on Trees

New Zealand Herald, Volume 78, Issue 24085, 2 October 1941, Page 17

Wounds on Trees

IN many private gardens there are trees, once excellent specimens of their kind, but which through neglect or faulty treatment have been allowed to deteriorate. Damaged branches have been allowed to keep their jagged ends and wounds into which water soaks to cause decay and give rise to disease. Yet a tree is long lived, and properly handled an apparently useless or dying tree can bo effectively rejuvenated. One of the first tasks is to remove any strangling growth of ivy. This slowly but surely will get the best of its tree host iti the fight for light and air where it exists. Contrary to general opinion, ivy does not suck the life from a tree. If the main stem of the ivy is severed at the ground, the ivy growth on the tree will wither and die, and after a few weeks may easily be ripped from the tree and burned. Some trees have ugly wounds where branches have been cut off and the •cut surface, being unprotected, lias started to decay. In such cases the decayed wood should be cut back to clean healthy timber. Once the fresh sound surface is exposed, care should be taken to make this as smooth as possible. The cut surface should then bo given a coating with white lead paint, or better still, bordeaux powder stirred into raw oil to make a thickpa int.