It has been almost a month since one of three small but sculptural and very prominent coast live oaks at work was destabilized by . . . well, children. They were climbing on it, as most good children should do. There were a few of them; and the tree is old and deteriorating. All three of the trees actually grew from the same rotten stump of a tree that was cut down decades ago.

I wrote about it at ‘Six on Saturday – Do Not Sit On Tree‘. The title will make more sense if you read about it.

To salvage the tree, I pruned off as much of the foliar canopy as possible. This eliminated some of the weight that the trunk needs to support, as well as decreased some of the resistance to wind, which exerts leverage against the compromised root system when wind blows. Sawhorses were placed under the trunk, and one of the others, to prevent them from sagging any lower.

Props that were fabricated to be more permanent then the sawhorses were installed last week. They do not actually support or even touch the trunks, but are there to prevent the trunks from sagging any lower. If the trunks start to lean on the props, I will prune a bit more weight off. If that doesn’t work, the props can be moved a bit farther out, where the trunk are higher.

Hopefully, the old root system of the destabilized tree was not so severely damaged that it can not recover. If it does recover, and the trunk is not supported by the new prop, the tree will need to eventually regain stability. It will be a tediously slow process. Because the trees are already so mature and disfigured, the props will likely never be removed, regardless of recovery.

The first picture above show the destabilized tree outfitted with a new prop. The second picture below shows the other tree that was outfitted with a new prop just because it is so likely to become destabilized.