As I walk the walnuts, which I do twice a day when I’m on the farm, Kahlua with her nose in the grass somewhere, I remember comments from some visitors who seem offended by my approach to tree management: you really should get rid of those lower branches. Not everyone tells me why – some assume that I’ll get the message that they know better than I do. Others clearly come from a forestry background, where any branch on the first 30’ of bole is not only an eyesore but probably also an offence punishable by excommunication from the College of Foresters. None actually asks me why I’ve left so many branches.
My purpose is actually to let the trees fill their space. Removal of a branch cannot be undone. Branches subtend the tree’s functional interface with its habitat. Remove a branch and you have reduced that interface. So what?
The conical growth rule discussed earlier ‘builds’ on one simple principal, relative growth, i.e. that growth is a consequence of growth accumulated before. Remove some of that growth and you immediately reduce the tree’s future potential growth. It affects the leaf area the tree can subtend, and the surface area upon which it can lay down the present year’s captured carbon. An open- grown tree explores every opportunity to push its tendrils out into unoccupied territory, and if I leave those lower branches where they are that territory is at my height, where I can see and feel the tree’s features, its health, and thus , in purely practical terms, its productivity.
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