The plant will put energy into supporting the crown
whether connected to the roots or not. This energy
can be better spent in healing the tree, therefore the
pruning. Not everything can be pruned and
transplanted at the same time. You have to know the
material you are collecting and be prepared to help it
through the recovery process. There are no hard and
fast generalizations about all plants.

Kitsune Miko

--- William Wingstedt
wrote:

I know the conventional wisdom regarding
transplanting is that pruning
should be done to balance leaves with what is left
of the roots. I
have done a little thinking in these regards and am
wondering on
several fronts...If the root that supports a
specific leaf are
removed, what good is done by removing the leaf? I
know that it will
wilt and be lost, but might pruning do more harm? If
the tree is no
longer able to support the leaf, then how can its
wilting damage the
tree? Is the tree able to cross wire itself and does
it attempt to
support the leaf through some other capillary
system? If that is the
case, then I could see that transpiration through
excess leaves may
harm a tree degraded by transplantation, but to me,
a wilting leave
can do no harm, because it means that the tree has
ceased providing it
with turgidity. Perhaps a tree is best able to
assess its abitility to
support what is left after tranplantation and be
left on its own to
die back to its own limits, the dead leaves at least
being able to
provide a little shade to what is left. Perhaps by
leaving it alone,
there might be more to gain than to expose more
living tissue to
damage by pruning. Maybe I don't understand enough
about tree
physiology, but after collecting what looks to be
about a 2 year old
Liriodendron from a precarious situation and
watching it wilt (it
shows signs of recovering) it got me wondering. What
are others
thoughts?

Bill Wingstedt


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"Expectations are resentments under construction."

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************************************************** ******************************
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