"a_plutonium" schreef
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

***
Trees grow to fit their surroundings.
This is not proper or improper.

What is improper is to abrubtly change the surroundings of a tree.
Replanting trees, cutting down neighbouring trees or taking down
neighbouring buildings: these changes always affect trees, sometimes
catastrophically.
PvR