I suspect previous damage, it didn't heal properly and rotted.

I don't think included bark was the original problem.

Excellent job with the pics Ken. I take it there was a Y branching arrangement at the point of breakage?

+oM

same storm.. decimated redbud seedling ... i had the pine to the north of it removed earlier that spring.. prevailing winds from the NW ... so first good blow... bingo bango ...

hey will.. note the included bark .. lol .

ken
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would you bet money on it being cleaned up and pruned since august... or still sitting there the same .. wait .. dont answer that ....

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Soon would have been included bark?

Sometime shortly I am going to get a slice about a foot below that. Think I'll see tree rings or trapped bark?

My parents have an oak doing this in their front yard. Are there any outward signs of tree failure on large trunked trees w/ included bark or do they just randomly fail?

Sometimes you get little warning. On trees in my yard I see them EVERY day and get to recognize seams in the bark which after the tree is cut down lines up with cracks. One got the jump on me so now I am always on the look out.

For what its worth the big oak in my yard had a LARGE branch which has some weird growing faster than the trunk defect. Looks like bark is encapsulating itself. Since it is not going to fall on the house mother nature gets to take its course.

Have the usual isa arborist take a peek. Like a car mechanic he sees dozens a day.

i will let you peeps discuss how and why it occurs ...

===>>> so is no one going to address the part above???

or do i have to do everything around here ...

and how can it be prevented .???

ken

IMHO, It's often a matter of degree of inclusion and species. I see redbuds that have very good branch angles, but when a branch is pruned out, the attachment at the joins is still rather weak and easily broken, and still will very often have bark inclusions even when the branches were at good angles. Conversely I see trees that solidly fuse branches together that you would never expect. In my fall photos thread is a very large Sugar Maple that I found on the University of Arkansas campus. With that tree, many many branches and crossing branches have fused solidly together in way you would NEVER expect. How do I know they are solid? In Jan 2009 we had the worst ice storm on record, that stripped many trees to basically bare trunk, and this tree suffered almost no damage. The branch joints would have given way then, if they were not extremely solid.

So to reintegrate, IMHO it's all but impossible to avoid some inclusions. It's more about how bad are they, what species of tree, and the particular circumstances of that tree.

Arktrees

Ken, all the things one would do to correctly prune for structure in a young tree will prevent this. Either the removal or heading back of codominant stems, ie "Subordination pruning" are aimed at just this.

A good overall treatise on this can be found at Ed Gilman's site.

+oM

isnt this all about crotch angles??

ken

Crotch angles are a big part of it, which are in turn affected by species characteristics, any damage that may have occurred along the way, and what, if any pruning was done in the formative years. Like Arktrees said, sugar maple seems to be able to remain solid even when the appearance is of less than desirable crotch angles.

Big mature trees, all you can do really is damage control. It's in the young stock that correct pruning can make a big difference. We've been planting a lot of Autumn Blaze maples over the last twenty years or so. Besides the fact that they grow fast-almost too fast-they have a large proclivity towards narrow crotch angles. Subordination pruning will remedy this, if you can keep up. With their fast growth, it is sometimes not possible to completely keep up with these trees inbetween pruning cycles.

+oM