Hey y’all. So I live in the PNW and we got our one snow storm of the year over night and it was a heavy, wet snow. I woke up at 6 and looked out at my Japanese maple and said, “I gotta shake the snow off that tree” and no sooner did I say that then one of its larger branches broke and tore down the stump vs a clean break. I’m about to go cut the branches away but question is this, do I need to bandage or seal the exposed trunk? The dark spot isn’t rotten, still nice and hard. there was a crack there so I’m guessing that’s from water seepage? Probably didn’t help I guess…
by Vermonster76
2 Comments
The dark spot is not rotten, that’s something called included bark, which was trapped between the trunk and the branch. Most likely a very narrow V-shaped crotch, which tend to be weakly attached.
Definitely cut the rest of that branch off. There are no paints or wound dressings which will prevent decay of the exposed wood, or speed up the tree closing off the wound. My belief is that this tree will decay at the exposed spot long before the tree can close off the wound. As long as the tree isn’t tall enough to land on something valuable, I’d leave it to attempt to recover on its own.
Thanks for your help! That’s what my local nursery said as well, just wanted to a few opinions. Thx again!