... in Britain.
I mean, it's true I've seen quite a few oaks with dead wood in prairies in southern England, but these are rather unusual here in France. It's probably because where I live, the weather is dryer, in places with lots of fog, mist, rain and wind, any wound will rot down and expand, whereas in drier, warmer climates it will heal better. Just a thought.
But it hurts my sight to see systematic dead wood on deciduous, as if a deciduous tree was fatally sick. Dead wood, "uro" and "jins" may make a tree look "venerable", but I prefer when it looks "majestic"
When one or two deciduous trees in a dozen have dead wood, it can give them some character, when it's 10 out of 12, to me it's a boring trick. I prefer concentrating on how to make scars as less conspicuous as possible.
Even on conifers, it's not that common here : it's not windy, we aren't in the mountains or by the sea. See for instance this photo of a Cedrus libani I took a few days ago, some branches were broken by a tempest last year, yet, it retains the shape of a Libanese cedar, a bit like the one on the national flag.
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Other cedars and conifers at Chaumont-sur-Loire :
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Even by the sea, where there are strong winds, you don't see that much deadwood, for instance, a seashore path on a cliff, the Quercus ilex (holm oak) are twisted, but any dead wood must have been erased by the elements :
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Anotrher photo from the same walk. Notice how the scars have healed, giving some "wabi-sabi", but the tree still looks strong and healthy.
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And, oh, one that I photographed thinking of you (yes, that's true!) a couple of years ago. The
only tree in the park of a castle with dead wood. Can't remember the species, maybe a hornbeam, whose wood is very hard :
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The thing is "does it look natural" ?
If most trees in your area have broken branches and open rotten trunks, it's OK.
Most of them just don't look like that here
But we've already had that kind of argument, and "de gustibus et coloribus non disputandum", so it's all right if you prefer that approach, as long as it makes nice trees to look at, the kind of potted tree that takes you to an imaginary landscape. My "ideal" landscape must be very conventional...