An Experiment

[Watto]

In early spring last year I had the opportunity to dig a reasonable looking small leaf privet. It was a good size, with subtle movement, plenty of branching and all round it had plenty of development opportunities.
After I dug it you could see the root system and nebari were poor, long thick roots going everywhere and only fine roots a long way from the trunk. So I decided to "flat cut" the base as you can do with olives at digging. My thinking was that privets are tough as anything and would root from the cut portions.
As an experiment I thought it had merit with a good chance of success.

[Watto]

Oops, forgot the photo.
My recommendation is don't try it!

[KIRKY]

I’ve taken privet cuttings and rooted them in water so would have thought privet was pretty tough. A flat cut was a bit ambiguous
Cheers
Kirky

[shibui]

The privets I have dug down here have also transplanted easily. I have chopped roots back to stubs so little or no feeder roots but have not tried a flat bottom cut - yet. Way back I did have some that were transplanted from an old hedge that took a full 12 months to recover.

I don't take 1 experience as definitive. There's so many other factors at play in transplants that the one factor we focus on may not be the cause of failure.

[KIRKY]

Has anyone tried to flat cut a trident maple, and had any success in doing so?
Cheers
Kirky

[shibui]

Apologies for derailing Watto's original privet thread but in response to Kirky's trident question I have cut some tridents very hard. I have 3 different hard root chop tridents on file.

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feral trident 2017 09.JPG

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Not sure if the qualify as flat cut? but all these, and others, survived the operation.

[KIRKY]

Sorry Watto, didn’t mean to derail your post. Many thanks Neil will give it a bash.
Cheers
Kirky

[dandelion]

I have cut back many privets back as hard as Shibui's photos of the tridents- I haven't lost many when doing this.

This one I cut flat but despite all my efforts to be better at documention I took a photo at this stage but not after the final chopeither way it has survived

Sent from my SM-A325F using Tapatalk

[shibui]

Kirky has asked for an update on flat cut tridents before trying it out.
Not the one shown above but I think it demonstrates that tridents can cope with massive root reduction.

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This was one of the XXL feral tridents from our garden that was left over after winter sale last year. Seemed too good to throw away so I chopped the trunk leaving just 2 roots and chopped both those short. It was virtually a big cutting.

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After removing a few roots you can see the size of the previous chop underneath

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The vast majority of trident roots grow from the exposed cambium at the cut edges.

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One remaining roots was around pencil thick. It has produced new roots - again, mostly from the cut end. There's a smaller root in front that died back to the trunk but has new roots from where it joins the trunk.

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Another view showing new roots growing from the thicker root and the smaller one that died.

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There's also a few small roots that have emerged from the trunk above the chop. Tridents are very good at growing new roots when the trunk is buried deeper.

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After this year's root prune. The trunk had died back substantially from the large upper chop, possibly encouraged by the severe root chop. I've decided to try for a hollow trunk tree.
Time will tell.

[Patmet]

This is the first trident I have worked with and have been surprised with how well it has rooted from a very severe flat cut. It was a garden nursery tree I trunk and root cut simultaneously last year. This is the root growth I have repotting it recently.

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At chop 2022

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Now winter 2023

[Jan]

Is your small leaf privet still looking like it will go (green bark), Watto