Hawthorne Pruning techniques for large branches/trunks.

[Beng]

Hawthorne is a new species for me. I have a very old tree I acquired this year, just put it into a great new pot and the leaves are now begining to open. All in all I like the style of it. However there's are one or two large ugly balls where trunk chops of large branches were removed. My question is to those of you with experience specific to Hawthorne. If I re-injure those areas with a knob cutter or concave cutter will Hawthorne form large ball shaped wounds again? If so I'll just leave them and hide them with growth as there's no point in re-injuring the area. It wants to bud out from that area this year but I've been scraping off any buds so far. It just keeps making more. If its worth re-injuring as this bulbous healing isn't a characteristic of hawthorn when is the best time to reinjure where a large branch was removed?

 

[discusmike]

What type of hawthorn is this?i have a english,and large cuts didnt heal well,i ended up doing a horizontal chop to the trunk,above a branch which is now the leader,now i have a much nicer trunk to work with.

 

[Beng]

What type of hawthorn is this?i have a english,and large cuts didnt heal well,i ended up doing a horizontal chop to the trunk,above a branch which is now the leader,now i have a much nicer trunk to work with.

It's a English Hawthorne. How do you get around the cuts not healing well now?

I couldn't chop the whole trunk back like you said you did, the worst offender is in the middle of the tree. Looking for a way to get a flush healing wound. Perhaps a deeply carved cut opposite of the bulge I have now.

 

[Brian Van Fleet]

My native hawthorn heals wounds very slowly (somewhere between J. Beech and K. Hornbeam, IME). I'd avoid making the wounds larger, but keep knocking the buds off. Regularly scrape the bark just down to the cambium to keep things moving.

 

[discusmike]

I choped back far enough to remove inverse taper and nasty cuts,from inexperienced help at the nursery,ive seen such nice trees get ruined from bad pruning technique at this particular nursery,my tree has no visible scars when looking at the tree,only where the t trunk was choped,but that will eventually not really be seen.good luck