Fruitless Mullberry

[lavenderro]

When I bought my house there was a pollarded mulberry next to the entrance, that was our show tree essentially. It was the first thing to go now we have a gorgeous native sycamore and a bird sanctuary where ugly nubs previously prevailed.

[joeriff]

I had one of these in my backyard, and it had been topped several times in the past. The tree formed decay pockets, and had sent out a bunch of long, thin suckers over the years. The suckers (then 20 feet long ) snapped off in wind storms and knocked out my power lines twice. Removing that tree was the best money I've ever spent!

[OBS_Ford_Diesels_Inc]

At my dad's house there was a huge Mulberry tree, the fruiting type. We allowed some of of it branches to be low enough to reach since the Mulberries taste great. It had 2 main leads on the trunk and that ultimately became the end of the tree.
That defect eventually did crack down the trunk. So we bolted it together. The tree wasn't near anything if it were to fall so we wanted to help it through it's last years.
Eventually the slightly smaller side of the tree that cracked began to die so we had that part of the tree removed. It lived that way for almost 10 years until dad sold the house. Of course at my last visit to the house I checked the tree. It was still alive and green and looked the same. But almost all the active cambium tissue at the base of the tree had died. There wasn't much keeping it alive. At that point I knew the tree had become dangerous. But as I said before no matter what way it fell there was nothing it would damage, except possibly other trees. I have since noticed the new owners have removed it as well as a couple other trees. 2 of them really needed to go because of decay, but the silver maple along the driveway could've stayed. It had never been butchered and only had a few small dead limbs. A light trim was all it needed. For the more than 15 years we lived there that tree only ever lost fairly small dead branches. Never anything big enough to cause damage.

[greatnath]

We have so many pollarded street trees in the UK. I once climbed a customers Ash and it was like this but had craters filled with water and grime. I called them 'rot pockets'.

[DrucilaB]

We have regular fruit bearing mulberries and would never do that to them. They have made great shade trees along with our 100+ foot tall black walnut. Also the animals in town all come visit in the summer and fall!

[HiLineTree]

They grow like a bad weed. Super fast sucker growth when cut back because of wrong placement of the tree originally. Great tree if you can pretty much leave it alone. I cringe when getting the request to do more of the same to the poor tree that the client wishes were smaller.

[hi_lo]

It looks like a wounded warrior on rehab or recovery 😂

[bonsai_wolverine]

Pollarding has got to be the stupidest thing to do to a tree.

[frederickheard]

A pollard on a branch that big is begging for trouble.

[leftytears]

Not the right thing but you gotta work with the customers and in domestic enviroment it sometimes has to be done