In article
,
Albert wrote:
Have a large Cedar tree and it has a large root that has grown out
which is 6 feet from the tree and is creating another stump in the
yard. Can one cut out this stump from the root without killing the
tree?
I've seen trees that had fully half their roots shorn off a decade or two
prior, and they continued to thrive. I also had the awful experience of a
tree having just one root damaged and the tree dropped dead after a couple
years. A few cedars like the Port Orford Cedar have greater susceptibility
to root rot, though I don't know that it's proven preliminary root damage
got the disease started. Other cedars, like the western red, are so tough
that even if a root gets rot in it, it rarely spreads to other roots, so
the trees are nearly never seen to have died of it.
As a very broad generality, a trees roots reach as wide as the tree is
tall, and it can lose a third of the roots toward the end without seeming
to notice. A thirty foot cedar could have the ground completely plowed
twenty feet away; a twenty foot cedar could have a lot shoveling done
twelve or fifteen feet away. So you say "large" and six feet away, you may
at least want to try not to severe the root that produced the new cedar,
by grinding only the top surface of the root. Very likely the root that
mothered a new tree is a foot below ground and you wouldn't need to grind
that deep.
Even if you have to do more than that to be rid of what you call a second
"stump," I'd say you should be able to grind that into the ground and not
too much risk to the parent cedar. But you won't know for sure it caused
no harm for three or five years. I'd put the odds in favor of no after
effects, no riskier than cutting suckers from a grafted tree. It COULD be
regarded as healthy to the parent tree to rid a root of anything like a
large root-swelling or a sucker that impedes water uptake to the main
tree. Worth considering both the worst-case and best-case outcome before
deciding what to do!
-paghat the ratgirl
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