I'd say it's been near two years ago I asked you about girdling this
pest-tree in my yard. Our last communication is below.

Until recently I had a job working some kind of incredible hours with
a worse commute, so I never got around to removing a strip of bark
like you suggested. Blah blah, any old excuse will do... but, you
may have heard about last months' wicked ice storm in eastern
Kentucky/southern Ohio. The tree came down. Onto the garage.
Pictures at:

http://juliesloan.home.mindspring.com/poplar.htm

My husband and a neighbor are working with chainsaws and come-alongs
in their spare time, to turn the pest into next years' firewood. I'm
busy enough g with my own chainsaw, clearing fallen trees off what
was once a road up and down the hollers that make up our acres. I
guess I'll be buying a gallon of roundup shortly, to help control
those white poplar suckers.

Here in the foothills trees are getting that first haze of leaf,
jonquils are blooming just down the road, and the ''daffydills'' I
transplanted last year have poked their little spears up along the
fence. I've turned the compost for the first time, am thinking about
building a redneck coldframe (bales and a storm-window), and am really
itching to get some good brown Kentucky earth under my fingernails.

How's things in your neck of the woods?

peace, Julie

^..^ ^..^ ^..^ ^..^ ^..^

To: vj sloan [vjb760atmindspringdotcom]
Subject: Question about girdling that poplar

vj sloan wrote:

Hi Pat
If it falls in any direction except due south it'll either take out the
woodshed or the garage, or demolish the smokehouse _and_ do considerable
damage to the house itself.

Then you will have to be very careful taking down the standing dead
tree.
And it won't be falling over as soon as the 'roots die' as we are
mainly
talking about fine roots and root hairs kicking the bucket. There are
plenty of big, woody roots still snaking around to hold it up. I
wouldn't
go waiting very long after the top wilts to cut the thing down,
though.

(Any wind-storm that can knock it down when freshly killed would
probably have tipped it, even if it was live.)

Girdle the tree and keep cutting down the suckers, or treating them
by wiping them with Roundup. Eventually the root system will be
exhausted of food and the whole tree, roots and all will die, because
food produced by the leaves won't be able to reach the roots anymore.
(By girdling, I mean removing a strip of bark all the way around the
tree all the way through to bare wood.) This takes some time. You
shouldn't see any effect right away, except maybe even more suckers,
and the tree will probably leaf out normally next spring, then begin
to wilt and die.-----

Reckon we should trim it back real good first?

No, the more leaves the roots have to support the sooner they will run
out
of steam.

It will be *years* before the
root system finally stops throwing up shoots.

Even with the girdling, or is that if I just cut it down?

That's if you just cut it down. If you kill it by girdling,
the roots will be exhausted.

My one neighbor had three of these beast-trees along one side of my
property, and cut one down, which suckered for years after. He would
have cut the others down, but he couldn't pay anyone to do it, and his
son-in-law, after helping take down the one tree (the one closest to
my house) weren't willing to do the others. My other neighbor has
a silver maple (the real deal, not the white poplar) on the other
side which is leaning over my garage. I'm going to have to have an
arborist look at it and determine if it is safe for me to cut some
superficial roots, or maybe if the tree should be cabled. (I have
a narrow, but deep lot which means the neighbor's trees have a major
impact on me, and I've learned that you should be very careful when
choosing and siting a tree.)

Pat in Plymouth MI