Black Walnut on Kansas Strip Mine Spoils: Some Observations 25 Years after Pruning

摘要

Dissections of 14 slow-growing black walnut trees on a strip-mine site revealed that bands of discolored heartwood were associated with pruned and nonpruned branch stubs. Ring shakes were associated with a few pruned and nonpruned stubs, especially with groups of stubs at the same position on the stem. The advantage of early pruning was that even the defects that developed were compartmentalized within the small nonmerchantable central core that was the diameter of the tree at the time of pruning.