Maybe a small chance for the bottom two pix, but don't get your hopes up. Top two: 999,999,999,974 of these incidences are not fixable.

Dan

I'm not going to contradict either Dan or Brandon.....it doesn't look good. But your chances of salvaging a split limb are far greater if you can repair the damage as soon as possible. Any more than 48 hours, the tree will have already started to compartmentalize the wound and then it will never mesh. Within 24 hours is preferred. I tried something similar with a damaged limb on a large rhody and while it didn't die, the torn tissue never did meld and after a season or two, I just pruned it off.

I'm also not so sure about the circle clamps. I might try something softer that would pose less damage to bark or wood. Or perhaps line the clamps with something soft and breathable, like burlap.

While the live outer portion of the limbs just COULD in theory graft back together the inner section of structural wood never will. My concern is it will be more likely to break completely next time.

Sucks also. Looks like you have quite the tree there.

Rfrys, can you post a picture of the whole tree? One of the experts can make take a guess on a pruning recomendation.

I had overlooked the part of the original post about the circle clamps until Gardengal mentioned it. The idea sounds kind of like trying to fix a human's broken arm with the same solution, to me.

Ditto what Toronado just said.

rfrys MD, I can surely sympathize, as we also lost a large old dogwood at the edge of our woods yesterday in the wet heavy snow - poor old tree snapped right in half. It had been leaning a bit, because of kudzu in its earlier years. There is one upright branch below the break, but there's no saving the rest. I'm hoping that one branch can survive.
Here's hoping yours can be saved too.
BlueBars

pshaw ... time to prune them off.. period ...

if you were personally .. a tree pruning expert.. and wanted to fool around ... what the heck ...

but if you are willing to pay $200 once or twice a year for the next decade for some ASA pro to come provide triage .. i personally question your sanity ...

i MIGHT change my mind.. if you post a pic of the whole tree ... though i doubt it ...

but frankly.. why invest that kind of money in therapeutic care.. when it WILL snow again ...

have the limb properly pruned off.. and watch the tree explode with new growth.. since there is no insult to the massive root mass ...

mother nature is a cruel mistress.. and trees pay the price ...

it is a tree.. we prune trees.. it is not a child.. we do not 'heal' it ...

ken, the devils advocate in this instance.. i reject your reality.. and substitute my own ... lol

Kind of hard to see the tree here, but most of the damaged branches are on the right side, highlighted in yellow on the 2nd pic.
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is cost an issue ????

dan.. how much would you charge her to fix this.. how often would you come back .. and what odds would you give her of success ... him????

i though it was multiple pix of one branch.. you just lost a major screen of the house behind .. hmmmmm ..

i am stumped.. pun intended ...

here in the great white north ... as noted.. i would just properly prune it all down.. cuz if this winter didnt do it.. next winter will..

your issue is that this tree grew.. weakly.. for God knows how many years.. w/o what we up here know as a REAL WINTER ... you escaped out reality ...

up here .. i would NOT make sense... because the risk of heavy snow remains ...

hey... welcome to the GW .. where are you .... is this a normal winter issue.. or a freak snowstorm????

ken

Maryland Ken. This tree made it fine through last years 40+ inches in one week. But this snow two nights ago was the heaviest snow I have ever seen. My property is small, and I only have about 5 nice trees. This one is the nicest, and is the focal point of my back yard. This is why I am trying desperately to save it.

dan.. how much would you charge her to fix this.. how often would you come back .. and what odds would you give her of success ... him????

I wouldn't need a helper, don't know what the going rate is there but mine for that visit - presuming the homeowner would want to do it after I explained success would be less than 5% chance - would be probably 275.00 + material, re-visit 175.00 next year with a pruning saw and removal to the back of my truck of at least two limbs. Tey can cut down that thing themselves and I wouldn't do a 1" heading cut because too expensive for such an easy job.

I can certainly empathize with losing a screen to that single-family attached across the alley/easement, but empathy won't overcome biology.

Dan

I don't think the tree needs to be removed. It won't look "horrible" because the tree has a lot of other branches. It will eventually fill in. I think removing the branches is the best bet and then let nature takeover.

Once removed, branches don't grow back and removing all the damaged branches - some pretty significant scaffolding branches and all on one side - is going to leave the tree looking rather lopsided. How well that might actually "fill in" over time is questionable. It may boil down to how badly you wish to keep the tree for its screening ability and how you may adjust to its look.

I'd suggest getting in the services of a certified arborist to assess the tree and do any branch removal or whatever is advised. With damage this severe, I'm not sure it's something you want to take on yourself (unless you are well-experienced with the pruning saw :-)) and it's worth the investment to have a professional determine the long term viability of the tree and how to best repair the visual as well as the physical damage. Likely some undamaged branches on the opposite side may need to removed as well, just to balance things out. Make sure the arborist is properly licensed and certified.

Rfrys- I discovered Sunday (1/30) that I had split, like your third photo, on the central branch of a dogwood tree. The tree has been blooming and growing fine since the ice storm of '97. The inside of the split is grayed, but there seems to be no insect or disease damage. We haven't decided whether to try to wrap, strap and seal or to let it go as is. (Today's icing wasn't bad.) Most of the damage to the dogwoods was due to the upper canopy collasping under the ice.

If I were you, I'd cut the worst branches and see what you can do with the third picture, if it isn't supported by another damaged branch.

buy saw .... see link ... you should be able to get one locally ... cheaper????

prune it properly ....

and see if you can live with what remains ...

and what i meant.. is if at that point ... you dont like it.. get rid of it ....

do you have any clue how to prune properly????? can you afford to have a pro come do the job once????

i understand its an incredible tree ... i PERSONALLY just am not into spending recurring costs to try to splint broken wood ... it just doesnt make sense that it can heal ...

i would never jump to killing it first .. its all about whether i can live with what is left ... and in most cases .. what is left.. is better than a hole in the landscape ...

you might want to think about ... if you end up with a gaping hole.. planting something new.. so that in a bunch of years.. it can become the replacement ...

think of this as an opportunity to ADD something new.. rather than a loss of something old ... that is a zen attitude ... about your garden ...

mother nature ... is a cruel mistress.. we can not become too attached to the past.. because she has a way of messing with the future .... if you think you can beat her.. good luck with that ...

good luck

ken

Here is a link that might be useful: link

Cornus floridas are notorious for growing twiggy growth on the end of their branches. The outcome is,.... that it catches more snow, or ice, that it can carry. Major limb breakage is the result.

Just remember, that blossoms are not a cash crop. The artful, successful form, is more important than the quantity of blooms.
It grows naturally as an understory plant in fairly dense deciduous forests. It's protected from a lot of wet snow and ice. It doesn't grow many snow hugging dense branches as it would out in the open sunshine like you see in most gardens....with a dose of fert and water, to boot.
Prune accordingly. Reduce the winter load.
Mike

rfrys- I thought I'd paste a couple of pics to show what kind of growth to expect after damage and after most of the upper canopy is gone, but the sight won't allow me to do so. (How do you add photos to your post? The help pages aren't working.) The growth is 2.8 yrs. after the ice storm damage.
The entire top of the tree was broken off on one tree, which resulted in almost 360 degree "sucker" growth along the entire trunk.The second photo would have shown two trees that were growing almost horizontally out from the canopy. Because most of the canopy is now gone,they have multiple suckers at the base and on the trunk. I trimmed five trees today, which took about two hours.

We have 37 naturally established dogwood trees along the wooded drive to the house.

What did you decide to do with your dogwood?

Birdgranny,

Hmmm, people never search for this....but here it is again....

One of the easiest ways to provide your photo to be embedded into a post is to upload it onto an image hosting site such as Photobucket, Flickr, etc. That should be pretty straight forward, and the individual sites will give instructions on how to get your photos uploaded to their site when you sign up.

Once your picture has been uploaded, find its image location address (URL) by right clicking on the image and copying the image location. Some sites may even provide the appropriate HTML code in a text box below the photo for your convenience. It will be the one that begins with a href=...

Let's say, as an example, that the address of the picture you want to post is http://somepicturesite.com/yourpicture.jpg

To embed the picture into a post, use the command:
img src="http://somepicturesite.com/yourpicture.jpg">;
_____________________________________

If your picture is too large to fit nicely into the text page, you can add a width attribute.

The command with the width attribute would look something like:
img src="http://somepicturesite.com/yourpicture.jpg"; width=600>
_____________________________________

Another option is to use a text link which might be beneficial to people on slow connections.

To do this, use the command:
a href="http://somepicturesite.com/yourpicture.jpg">your text goes here/a>
_____________________________________

Note that I had to use special characters to get the commands above to show up here without turning into pictures, but you can use them as shown (with the correct image web address, of course).

I know this is a late posting but I had the exact same thing happen to my large Dogwood about 5 years ago. I immediately tied and supported the damaged limbs. Then when I could get someone to help me (turned out that was a few months later) we drilled holes through the branches and placed stainless steel bolts and nuts to hold them together. The tree has healed fine, over the bolts and is as beautiful as ever.