Thank you Jim for making the point a lot clearer than I did. I am
talking from experience with a Buttonwood. It was two years after the
break had healed and with plenty of leaves to show it was healthy. I
inadvertently bumped into the branch and it snapped right off.

:-( Carl L. Rosner :-(

Jim Lewis wrote:

Jim Lewis wrote:
snip



However, do not _ever_ try to wire and bend that branch!

Tree wounds do not "heal" like a broken bone heals. What you


see


as "healing" is a thin layer of cells that have grown over


the


broken part. Underneath the bark, the break is still just as
broken. ANY attempt at bending it in the foreseeable future


will


lead to another break.

I almost always put a drop or two of model airplane cement on


the


deadwood portion of a break before I try to repair it. That
doesn't make it any safer to wire and bend, but it keeps
accidents (a bird landing on the branch, brushing against it,
etc.) from being serious.






I guess I wasn't clear--the purpose of the wire was only to


support the


branch and hold it place as is--not to bend it.




It wasn't that, but we have a lot of new-to-bonsai, and
new-to-tree-physiology members here, and I didn't want to leave
the impression that a broken branch will really, really "heal."

They do NOT heal. Once broken, a tree branch STAYS broken. You
can grow a few layers of cells over the break, thus, "fixing" it,
but it will always be there and always be a very weak point in
that branch.

Jim Lewis - - Tallahassee, FL - Our life is
frittered away by detail . . . . Simplify! Simplify. -- Henry
David Thoreau - Walden





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