Large Crepe Myrtle styling help

Davevall

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I would like some styling help on this large Crepe Myrtle that I picked up the other day. I’m not sure if I should carve the dead wood area or cut it back even with the trunk? Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Dave
 

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BobbyLane

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I would like some styling help on this large Crepe Myrtle that I picked up the other day. I’m not sure if I should carve the dead wood area or cut it back even with the trunk? Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Dave

what you do should be based on what YOU like and not what others like. so if you like deadwood on deciduous then you would go about making a feature out of the deadwood, looking at trees in the wild with deadwood or looking at naturalistic bonsai with deadwood features for ideas.
or do you like deciduous trees to have clean unblemished trunks, so then you would cut the wound flush and seal with a big blob of cut paste and sit and wait ten years or more for it to heal over if ever it does.
so what do you like?
 

Zach Smith

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The stubs don't appear to have enough integrity to remain as a feature, which means when they go you'll have a pretty abrupt change of trunk thickness at that higher point. Given that, I believe the best option is to carve it all down to make the tapering transition as smooth as possible.

For what it's worth.
 

Wilson

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I agree with @BobbyLane do what you think is nice. I think you could have a fun tree, with gnarly hollows. I imagine that crapes grow like crazy in Florida, so it should develop fast. Nice pick up!
 

Davevall

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Thank you everyone for the reply’s. I too thought it would look nice tapered down. It has the start of a good nebari on it now. I realize it would take a few years to look good but they do quite well in central / south Florida and heal up rather quickly.
 

Davevall

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Done for now. I decided to shape the bad area down with the taper of the trunk. Carved out all the rotten wood, let it dry out, mixed two part wood epoxy to fill the whole and sealed the outer area. I will fill the remainder of the hole tomorrow with more epoxy. The two part epoxy works great for this. I have some Florida Maples I used it on a few years ago and it still looks like the day I did it without any shrinkage and superior water proofing
 

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SU2

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I would like some styling help on this large Crepe Myrtle that I picked up the other day. I’m not sure if I should carve the dead wood area or cut it back even with the trunk? Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Dave
Am I missing something or did you sever the living vascular tissue on the borders of the biggest wound? Looks like you had nice living tissue there but that it was ground-off....I hope that wasn't done in-hopes-of a "smoother recovered 'callous' once healed" because the growth rate to close that up would need to be very quick, for many years, to get anywhere, but you don't even have it in a grow-out container....if it were mine (and I'm closing-up some huge wounds on C.Myrtles myself!) then getting it into a bigger container, and growing the hell out of some long primaries to start closing woundage & building initial tapering, would be my sole consideration when intervening on that guy :)
 

TN_Jim

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If not get gonna carve it, would sand the wound as smooth as possible... palm sander, have done this many times with no issues.
 

Davevall

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Well, here it is a year later. It has a long way to go but so far so good. Crepes grow like crazy in South Florida so it’s constant shaping and pruning.
 

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