I don't mean to be difficult, but, it is really as close to those utility wires as it appears to be, or is that an illusion? People planting trees directly under power lines or only slightly offset is kind of a pet peeve of mine, so I hope it's an illusion. Unless they exclusively feed your property and have a dedicated circuit breaker on the pole.
As long as the tissue above seems alive, I'm not sure that branch is really done for. I had a Japanese maple that looked as bad after a falling Juniperus virginiana (which a prior property owner had not kept to one leader...damn them) tore through the middle of it. It eventually completely...eeehhhh...recovered a normal physiological function and physical appearance through callus tissue growth. (LOL...some of you will understand why I put in that way) So, maybe just be patient. OTOH, I feel like someone's who's dealt with these situations more often in a professional context is the best to answer that question.

David, that is an illusion, it is planted about 20 feet back from the power lines. I am aware I will have to train the tree up and over or cut back branches as it grows so as not to interfere with the wires.

My concern in leaving it is whether or not that will be strong enough once it heals over completely - it is the main trunk/central leader of the tree. I may need to post another picture from a different angle.

that is a toughie. I can't tell extent of damage or exactly which branch might make the best new leader, but from the photos provided, you might try this with the green being the new leader:

You have a couple of issues here.

1) you will lose more than 40% of canopy

2) the cut branch is big, and the cut will take a while to heal. If you have some systemic issue that is preventing callousing, you might have same issue on cut. Does the tree seem unhealthy in other ways (dead leaves or bad smell)?

3) It will look goofy has heck for a while. Of course it is a Valley Forge and it already DOES. My VF looks the SAME WAY - it looks like it wants to grow sideways. Supposedly this gets better with age, but mine is same size as yours now.

4) If you are going to prune, do it now before it starts leafing out

You could also try pruning back the undesirable leader over a number of years, but that is going to be a bunch of work.

While I think the tree could be trimmed up to make a nice looking tree, the fact that it is only 20 feet from the power line, in my opinion is to close for a tree that potentially could grow to over 100 feet.

I think a better solution would be to plant a new tree 2 to 3 times the distance from the power lines or a tree that does not have the same potential growth habits.

I would let the this tree grow until the new tree is capable of providing the same shade.

If you decide to trim the tree, I personal would work with the current large limb. If you trim as suggested I am afraid you would end up with a significant weakness where the multiple side limbs comes out of the tree.

i would start over also.. and plant the new one at least 40 feet from the power lines ...

unless you have a bucket truck ... as i dont know how you will otherwise train it up and OVER the lines ?????

aw heck.. i would still get rid of it ...

ken

Ken - I was planning on hiring an arborist with a bucket truck to help with pruning as the plant grows taller than me and my ladder + pole pruner can reach. I have seen many American elms planted a similar distance from power lines and pruned up and over the ines as they grew. The ones I've seen look great with the classic vase shape above the lines which is why I planted a row of 4 along the front of my property.

Corkball - your diagram was exactly what I was thinking if I were to cut and re-train a new leader. The size of the cut and whether or not it would heal is my biggest concern there. I too have found Valley Forge to be difficult to train to the typical upright vase shape. As you noted, mine likes to grow out more than up. I am considering replacing it with either Jefferson or Princeton. I already have a Liberty Elm and New Harmony.

Krnuttle - agreed, there will probably be structural issues in the long term with one of those smaller branches trained as a new leader.

It sounds like starting over may be the best bet. I can plant the new tree 5-10 feet further back but really no further. I have a centerpiece tree in the middle of my front yard and do not want the crowns of these elms to overshadow that tree.

Said it many a time before, may as well repeat: Elms are ungainly in youth. Mature Am. elms are about as majestic a tree as you will find, but you'd never know it when viewing young stock. Your conundrum is well-founded. I'd probably have to be standing there, preferably with pruning tools at hand, to really work it out, but I'm sure it can be done. Very vigorous species, there will be rapid recovery no matter which route you take. One pointer to remember-branches near to where wounds have occurred help to close that wound. so if you can, retain those branches/branchlets near to the wounded area, at least for a time. and remember, you can slow things down via heading-back cuts, so if you do want to squeeze the juice into a new direction, you can actually do that.

+oM

Thanks Tom. Makes my decision to give pruning a shot vs. rip out and replace a little harder!

Uh.....sorry? FWIW, I've always found elms difficult to prune satisfactorily. Or put another, more positive way, they neither need nor take much pruning, generally. Kind of like birch-what do you really ever do with a birch, save for snip a lower branch or two? Elms are kinda like that IMO. But even this one, which does beg for some action following that tear, will pretty much be what it's going to be.

+oM

OK, thanks!

I have no training in trees, so take this with that in mind. I'd leave it alone. 2 years is not long for callus formation, and your tree looks about right for that time. Especially leave that branch right below the injury, as it will draw sap and help heal the bottom of the injury. It will heal in from the sides, more so than from the bottom up. We had hurricane Juan, Sandy, Arthur, and they all dropped trees, some on other trees. They are all in various stages of recovery, and since some have been through more than one hurricane, they appear to be healing up good and strong. You can tidy up the extra branches in a few years when the tree has closed the injury. Mean while, branches you don't want later can be slowed down by cutting off some of their side growth. It keeps them smaller in diameter when you do that, and the eventual cut to remove them will be smaller. I suspect if you ask 10 people how to prune your tree, you'll get 12 answers, grin.
I grew up in a house with 90 elms, so I saw what my dad and grandfather had done with them. Can't say they were right, but the trees were old and magnificent. Sometimes trees will grow no matter what you do, if planted in a climate they like. You might end up with a slight defect where it was injured, but if it's not close to your house, it may be just fine...100 years of fine.

Jocelyn, if you don't mind the ask, where are you these days? Sounds like FL? Reason I ask is that rather late in my career, I've become fascinated by the plant growth potential down there. See some amazing things.

Now back to your regularly scheduled thread.

+oM

Hi +om, I'm on PEI, Canada. Trees grow fast here though, best agricultural land in Canada.

Well, you might not "worry" about it getting into the power lines & just take your chances w/the line-crew "trimmers". Some do an OK job, others are butchers. But 20' is nothing for an elm to reach, as my 10 yr old Chinese elm has shown. Fortunately, it's just getting into an insulated telephone line, which isn't a big deal. Power lines (especially uninsulated higher-voltage) are another issue.

Below's my Chinese elm -- you can see the telephone line going thru it:

Well, if the line crew does trim it, you might be able to root some of the twigs....wouldn't all be a loss, grin.

Beng and Jocelyn - that's why I'd like to stay on top of keeping it pruned back from the lines - the trim crews around here seem to be a little over zealous.

I was a little off, Jocelyn! Treeguy and all: Every so often, someone here laments the line trimmer's work and rightfully so. It can be terrible. The key, beyond a loaded 12-gauge (and staying home all the time) is for your community/city/town/county to formulate a tree ordinance. Within this ordinance, requirements for proper line clearance standards can be set. No, it won't be perfect: I think we all like having electricity and they will still need to do their thing, but within such an ordinance, you can at least require such things as target pruning cuts-ie. back to a lateral, not just a random heading-back cut at whatever distance standard the power company requires, timing issues, so that let's say Dutch elm disease is present in your area, you can set it that elms not be pruned during the time of transmission of that disease....etc. I know it won't help you-Treeguy-in your specific case, but over the long haul, these regulations (such a dirty word!) are good things. We've got these set up in our city and the difference when you cross the boundary is stark.

+oM

Agreed Tom. I understand the need for the trimming but hate seeing evergreens completely topped and random heading back cuts on the deciduous trees' limbs at a set distance from the wires. Such regularions can prevent disasters like that. My street was trimmed last summer, and I was happy to see much of the trimming being done appropriately. There was still a Doug fir that was topped and a few limbs that were headed back nowhere near a branch angle/base. Thankfully these were few.

With the time change, it may still be light out when I leave work tonight. I will try and get some more pics at a different angle to see if you guys can help me decide whether or not to try trimming or to replace the tree. I'm still undecided.

Sounds good. That oughta help.

+oM

ps.....aughta?

A couple different views of the damage. I can take more pics of the entire tree from a different angle tomorrow if it would help.

There's certainly enough vigor for it to withstand some degree of branch removal. To wit, if that was one of our street trees-realizing, we only get to any individual tree maybe once /5 yrs.-quite a lot of that congestion and lower stuff would be gone. We're not in the business of killing our stock, nor would this kill this tree. Aside from some of the caveats already offered, ie. leave any branch you can near to the wound, etc......I'd prune away, sculpting as I see fit. the tree will take it. And especially since its your yard tree, you have virtually unlimited time to tweak and adjust as time goes by. It's not out of the question that you could completely reorient the tree's growth away from the lines at this point.

+oM

Hmm, like corkball said above, a toughie. Thing is, if you're going to do a massive cut, do it now before the tree gets much larger. Longer you wait, harder it is -- elms are very fast. If it was me, I'd do as corkball shows.

Looking at the lines, you have 4 insulated telephone lines, then 3 power lines above those.

It's getting the snip today - I'll post "after" pictures this evening!

Well, I decided to try Corkball's suggestion and select the most upright
of the large branches below the split as the new leader/trunk. I
pruned all other side branches back by 1/3 - cuts made just past a small
lateral branch. Then I removed the main trunk (portion with the
injury) above the new main leader. Here are the results. If it does
not grow well, I can always remove it and start over.
View from the South:

Yes, by all means, shave some off that big cut. there's no branch collar present, so just do your best to not leave a stub. Plenty of vigor in a young elm-I think wound will close just fine. Might take a couple years.

The tree will look goofy to some-I get that-but subordination cuts often have that effect. Most challenged are those who think we prune trees "to make them pretty". Those folks will never get it-that what we're after is longevity in the landscape. If the structure is set, we increase that likelihood. I'd probably still come back and carefully lop off some of those low stragglers. I'm sure you're trying to retain some branch/foliage count, which is the right thing to do. But with the rapidity with which elms grow, I believe you can still do that.

+oM

Thanks for the guidance going forward Tom. I know better than to leave that stub on the trunk cut :)
Do you think the branch I selected will eventually straighten to be more vertical here? That was my other concern.
I easily removed 50% of the crown on the tree. Do you really think it would be OK to cut those lower branches back more? I was planning on tip pruning the new growth on the lower branches this growing season and cutting them back by half a year from now - just so I don't remove too much all at once and shock the tree more than I have to. Sound good or do you still think I should remove more on the lower branches?

Yeah, you'll be good either way. I don't believe in any ratio, ie 30%, etc. of live crown. Each tree is too much an individual thing, plus, so much of my background is in municipal forestry, where we have to accommodate competing interests, leading to my having seen literally thousands upon thousands of trees, perhaps pruned a bit too heavily, still bounce back as though nothing had happened. That said, you've got the right idea, and if you want to take it a little slower, all the better.

As to straightening out, this gets a little nuanced for some folks. Basically, a new tree is going to grow over the outside (but within the bark, of course)of that old tree, this, and all growing seasons to come. So no tissue already in place is going to change its orientation, but new growth will nevertheless drastically change how that tree occupies its spot. Gravity and phototropism are the two big forces which cause trees to grow more or less at right angles to the earth's surface they happen to be located on. Obvious exceptions are where a tree is overhung by other trees or shade-producing objects, where you'll see them arching out away from whatever it is shading them. Trees along river banks are a classic example. But that too is phototropism. Anyway, I think that very generally, the tree will appear to "straighten up". I had a linden tree on the terrace one time, where the property owner didn't like that it had a little streetward sway in the trunk. The tree had already been there for maybe 8 or 10 years, and she couldn't believe I couldn't just push on it to get it "straight"! But the point is, nobody would ever look at that tree today and know this had ever been a (perceived) problem. It's crown-reaching for light-is perfectly aligned, the trunk has fattened considerably, and that little tiny sway is hidden deep inside. I think your tree will do roughly the same, with the one caveat being that we can't predict what other storm winds, etc. may still mess with it in the future.

OK, sounds good!

Here is the improved cut on the top of the old main trunk. Close enough or still too much stub, what do you think?

Might be about as good as you're going to get it without damaging remaining limbs. It is the type of wound that trees can have difficulty with, but there's no option. Set it and forget it!

+oM

Agree w/Tom -- any more cutting might do more harm than good. Maybe some antifungal treatment there to stop decay before it seals over.

Good luck! Hope it works for you!

Thanks, me too!