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  Wednesday, 05 August 2015
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During the past winter, this black birch was girdled above and beyond the recommended procedure (2 cuts, 6 inches apart) yet is still alive and well. Amazing! I wonder how long it will stay alive???
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8 years ago
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#166
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Yeah, it's amazing how they can do that.
8 years ago
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#165
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I see this frequently with soft maple. I can peel the bark off between the two cuts. The tree is stunted, but survives for years.
9 years ago
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#164
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Last summer I visited several old tree-girdling projects to see how well the technique worked, and I found that as many as 30% of the trees never died from the girdling. They recovered and kept on growing. But in most of those cases the issue was girdling technique; the person doing the girdling did only a single cut rather than two. That clearly isn't the case here. Even so, the tree could well live another year.

The bigger issue for this tree is that with a cut that deep and big, the tree could be more vulnerable to snapping off during high winds (the photo below is from a girdled tree that did just that). I'd steer clear of this tree on windy days.

P1000613.jpg
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