thistlebloom
Garden Master
- Joined
- Dec 1, 2010
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Using a wound dressing or tar on pruning wounds used to be common practice.
It's been discovered, (by people who study these things), that wound dressing actually delays the trees compartmentalization of the cut and can also cause rot by trapping moisture.
If you have ever looked at an old cut that was made too far from the branching collar you can see where the stub has died back to the collar leaving a dead portion. That's the tree sealing off the live tissue.
An interesting fact is that trees don't "heal' from cuts, they just seal it off. If that part of the cut is kept moist it can't do it's job.
It's been discovered, (by people who study these things), that wound dressing actually delays the trees compartmentalization of the cut and can also cause rot by trapping moisture.
If you have ever looked at an old cut that was made too far from the branching collar you can see where the stub has died back to the collar leaving a dead portion. That's the tree sealing off the live tissue.
An interesting fact is that trees don't "heal' from cuts, they just seal it off. If that part of the cut is kept moist it can't do it's job.