I never realized that supporting a tree trunk when a sapling would be
injurious. The first acquintance to this
phenomenon was when I cleaned out a woodlot where I wanted to save all
the spruce but remove the elm
and ash and mulberry that was crowding out the spruce. So what
happened when all the spruce were
cleaned of the weed trees growing in their midsts is that some of them
lost weight support for as the
wind would blow them against the hardwoods. So in a good wind last
year, I lost one of my spruce with
two others tipping towards possible calamity.

So what happened is that the trees used each other for support and
they just kept growing taller. So
trees monitor their surroundings and if they have support they grow
too tall and when the support is
removed, they precariously are prone to wind damage.

This happened recently on my other trees which I had put tomato cages
on them and chicken wire
to protect them from rabbits. I did this to rock-elm and apricots. And
when I removed the cages
they were spindly and branches drooped to the ground. If I had not
caged them, they would have
grown properly with strength to cope with wind.

So it is dangerous for young trees to be improperly supported because
the tree never grows properly
in strength to fight against the weather. And if you leave the cages
on too long and then remove, many
of the branches or main trunck is damaged or lost in a stormy wind.

So I have found that young trees are best kept without any form of
support, if that support is improperly
applied. A proper support is where the tree can withstand wind if the
support is removed.

Archimedes Plutonium
www.iw.net/~a_plutonium
whole entire Universe is just one big atom
where dots of the electron-dot-cloud are galaxies