Girdled Flowering Crab Apple Tree Blooms Again

Southern Maine was blessed/cursed with above average snowfall in the winter of 2013-14. Homeowners responded by repeatedly snow blowing and shoveling out their driveways and pathways. The results were monumental mountains of snow and snowdrifts everywhere.

In our yard that meant as much as six feet of snow blanketing flower beds and landscaping shrubs and trees. Perfect conditions for active winter critters to tunnel unseen underneath in search of a meal of succulent vegetation.

Our flowering crab apple tree was high on their menu. Over the course of the winter the voles and other denizens of the deep snows managed to strip the bark from the main trunks of our favorite ornamental as can be seen in the accompanying photo on the right.

Hoping against hope, we researched the available literature about the effects of girdling on trees and the possibility of discovering an antidote to the dastardly deeds of the hungry rodents. As we surmised, we found that arborists and horticulturists agreed that if the bark of a tree is completely removed on every side of a tree's trunk, there is little that can be done to save a tree so damaged. A call to the State Extension Cooperative confirmed our worse fears.

But we couldn't give up on our resilient tree that had survived wind storms and everything that mother nature had thrown at it over the years. Hoping against hope and defying professional advice, we bound the wounded and condemned trunks of our flowering crab apple with black plastic tape and waited to see if it could possibly survive though perhaps only weakly.

We were rewarded for our efforts with amazing results as can be seen in the photo on the left taken in the Spring of 2014. Not only did our tree survive, but it bloomed with a generous display of blossoms.

One trunk did not fully recover and gradually succumbed to its wounds. We cut it low, but have been rewarded with an offshoot that promises to gradually replace the original in years to come. 

We were still not sure whether this resurgence of bloom was permanent or a temporary phenomenon that would end in the eventual death of the tree. After the winter of 2014-15 which proved to bring an even more abundant amount of snow, we watched to see if the voles came back to finish their destructive work. To our relief, our tree did not suffer any more damage under the most recent winter snows. Perhaps the plastic tape deterred the critters' efforts to feast on our tree although their trails revealed after the snows had melted that they were very active all winter.

We have since camouflaged the black plastic tape with a coat of black alder stain to make it less visible and resembling the look of the original bark.

You can't keep a good tree down, So don't give up on your favorite tree. Give it a second chance with a wrapping of plastic tape.