Cutting paste keep on or remove

[maroun.c]

Hi,

after you apply cutting paste do you remove it after few weeks or months or keep it there?
Also when doing Jin or Shari do you use cutting paste to cover the branches you worked on or let them rot more naturally unsealsed?
Thanks.

 

[Shibui]

Wound sealer works best to stop the active cambium around the edges of the cuts drying out. That way it grows faster so the wound heals up quicker. Leave it on because the new bark is growing under there. Eventually it will fall off. If the wound is still not covered (assuming you want it to heal completely) put new sealer over the area.
Jin and Shari are not meant to heal over so no need for cut sealer on those. Dead wood is usually painted with a wood preservative so it does not rot away. Maybe if you want hollows you could let the exposed wood rot but most people use tools to carve away unwanted wood and sculpt to look natural. Rot is unpredictable and you are just as likely to lose the jin as to get great looking dead wood.

 

[Jzack605]

I personally would allow any tree to heal on its own devices, sans wound sealer. There’s very little evidence it helps, and more evidence that it can be detrimental. This has been scientifically proven. There may be some exceptions, particularly in the bonsai world.

 

[Shibui]

There’s very little evidence it helps, and more evidence that it can be detrimental. This has been scientifically proven.

For many years I also followed that advice. Then I decided to do a trial to show this to be true. I half covered a large cut (about 2"diam) on a Japanese Maple with the Japanese putty type cut paste.
Far from proving that the sealer was detrimental, The covered side was almost completely healed over by the end of summer. The uncovered side had barely started to roll over the wound.

I'll leave it to you to guess which half was sealed.

Now I'm a convert. I have not seen any detrimental effects from using it.
Smaller cuts can heal themselves without aid. Large cuts on trees that are growing rapidly to increase trunk size can heal without aid in the time the trunk is growing. Cuts which are large in relation to the trunk size on trees which have reduced growth as they transition to being bonsai are sealed to speed up callus growth to cover the wounds quicker.

 

[0soyoung]

Okay, now cover the other side and show us the dramatic results. Also, is this your only example?
I've tried this kind of thing many many times. It works out the opposite as often is the way you believe. IOW I think you are suffering from 'confirmation bias'. Of course, the argument could be reversed that my failure to see such results is that I only see what confirms my contrary view. That is why science takes a lot more than one lonely instance of magic - the results must be reproducible by other people in other places on the same kind of thing.

Further, if what you are saying is true, wouldn't glopping cut paste around a trunk be a way to make it thicken quickly? Have you ever given that a try?

btw, what is your understanding of why cut pastes (or whatever you are using) produces the results?

 

[Shibui]

Why would 'glopping cut paste around the trunk' make it thicken? There's no cut there.
I think this works by protecting the actively growing new bark as it grows over the cut area. Protecting it from the sun? From drying out in hot weather? Not sure of the cellular reasons but all my experience shows it does seem to help.
The picture above is my only trial covering half a cut. After that dramatic growth I covered the rest of the scar and it has now healed completely. Any others I have completely covered the entire cuts. Still seems that cuts are healing over much faster with than without but, as you point out, might just be my bias seeing that.
What sort of trials would you suggest to prove or disprove this properly? I'm game to give it a go.

 

[leatherback]

I think this works by protecting the actively growing new bark as it grows over the cut area. Protecting it from the sun? From drying out in hot weather? Not sure of the cellular reasons but all my experience shows it does seem to help.

exactly my experience. If you have ever lifted cutpaste in mid-summer, you can see the bright yellow-to-green young expansion of the bark in mid-summer. Without cut-past I have never seen this.

Cut paste makes a huge difference on the type of cuts we make.

 

[Dav4]

If you work with deciduous trees, seal the cuts....

 

[0soyoung]

Why would 'glopping cut paste around the trunk' make it thicken? There's no cut there.

"Healing" occurs by cambium cell division just like it makes stems thicken. The bark on the lip is younger/thinner than on the rest of the tree is all. So, if covering this younger bark (the so called 'lip') makes cambium cell division occur more frequently (i.e., grow faster) why would it not have the same effect anywhere else. Exactly what does having been a cut have to do with it (I ask rhetorically)?

An example (this happens to be a diagonal slice through a stem with life only on one side)



Again, all growth comes from that little line of green, the cambium, just under the bark (including the inner bark or phloem).
I agree that immediately covering the line of exposed cambium prevents it from dying back, so it can form a new epidermis in situ and affect regrowth from there instead of further back where it would have been if left uncovered. But, I don't think coverings have any real effect a few weeks later, once the new bark has formed.

What sort of trials would you suggest to prove or disprove this properly? I'm game to give it a go.

• One trial might be
  • cover the wound for 3 weeks with some kind of removable moisture barrier (parafilm, polyethylene, putty, NOT glue)
  • apply cut paste (or what ever you use, including glues) to just the upper versus just the lower half of the wound
  • OBSERVE the difference in wound closure covered/uncovered lip after a substantial part of a growing season (or more)

This would be pretty much independent of the shape of the branch pruning wound and of the circumstances involved with each specific instance. Of course, one should have more than one instance of each (upper/lower cover) to be scientifically rigorous. Nevertheless, if the effect is as dramatic as you believe it is, then there should be a dramatic difference in the closure in just two tests (one covered on top, the other covered on the bottom) - a demonstration of plausibility of the hypothesis (far short of scientific proof).

This trial might be worth trying on several species. Even better yet, if trials were conducted and observations posted by other BNutters than just you @Shibui. ? I am, of course, interested in any ideas you might wish to present.

 

[BrianBay9]

I think cut paste's primary purpose is to hide the wound and keep me from thinking about it as much. I forget about it. It heals and seems quicker.

 

[Shibui]

Thanks for the trial ideas. I'd love some others to also do some rigorous testing to get better results. I have plenty of trident maples with various sized cuts each year that I can set up some trails for this and maybe a few other species.

Why the cover for 3 weeks part? Shouldn't we just go straight to step 2 and apply chosen sealer (to half the wound) as that's what happens in real life?

 

[0soyoung]

Why the cover for 3 weeks part? Shouldn't we just go straight to step 2 and apply chosen sealer (to half the wound) as that's what happens in real life?

This is just to give the exposed ring of cambium time to form and epidermis.
Then we see if cut paste (a sealer) has any effect on the rate of closing the wound.

 

[Shibui]

I will bear that in mind and maybe add some more possibilities to the trials.
Anyone else willing to do some trials and document results?

 

[maroun.c]

Interesting to see that a topic I thought was such a basic one seems to be a very controversial topic still. Thank u for all the replies.

 

[0soyoung]

Anyone else willing to do some trials and document results?

I will, but I don't have a sizeable branch removal in the foreseeable future. Clearly it is several months away for you. Meanwhile, I guess we wait to see if anyone attempts at least part of the trial and posts their results.

Thanks for discussing the topic, @Shibui I look forward to anything further you have to offer in this regard.

 

[leatherback]

This is just to give the exposed ring of cambium time to form and epidermis.
Then we see if cut paste (a sealer) has any effect on the rate of closing the wound.

The whole point is that it creates an environment where the cambium can optimally expand. By letting it dry in first you do exactly the opposite. This is also why it is recommended to 'open up' the edges of wounds if they have not closed after a year.

Personally I will not participate in this experiment. I have seen on my own trees time and again the difference it makes.

 

[Brian Van Fleet]

Remember this experiment, @0soyoung
https://nebaribonsai.wordpress.com/2015/01/17/cleaning-up-a-wound/
https://nebaribonsai.wordpress.com/2015/01/19/cleaning-up-a-wound-the-discussion-continues/

 

[0soyoung]

Remember this experiment, @0soyoung
https://nebaribonsai.wordpress.com/2015/01/17/cleaning-up-a-wound/
https://nebaribonsai.wordpress.com/2015/01/19/cleaning-up-a-wound-the-discussion-continues/

Yes, I do.
It continues to bother me that there is (at best) very weak comparative evidence of being kept damp and not. On the line of the memory refresh there is also this
http://www.bonsainut.com/threads/regarding-wound-healing.20768/

(btw, if you click where pix are not displayed I think it will take one to the album pic.​

http://www.bonsainut.com/media/ur2s2_2014-11-26.1890/​

but the link in the post, for this example, is​

http://www.bonsainut.com/index.php?media/ur2s2_2014-11-26.1890/)​

I don't think anything magical happened because it was all under damp sphagnum covered with raffia. Maybe your Certainly someone else's view is contrary to mine (i.e., the evidence is right there in the pix that the wound was indeed closing faster). Therein lies my point in continuing to harp about this.

Thx.

 

[Brian Van Fleet]

Harp away, I’m convinced.

 

[0soyoung]

Maybe you no longer care, @Shibui, but I found a few cases to test the hypothesis that putty, cut-paste, or some kind of moisture barrier/retainer covering the lip will make it grow faster. I used plumber's putty with a dash of NEEM worked in. I am testing with wounds on two clones of a generic green acer palmatum.

The first instance is the wound left on the tree from where I sliced off the section in post #9.
Today I applied putty thusly

Another case is an several year old chop that has formed a lip above the chop (looking vertically down on the chop). The chop is in a "V" shape with the bottom in the middle of the trunk, midway from the branch going right and the other going left in the pic. Today I applied NEEM doped plumber's putty thusly .

This tree also has three other instances of exposed wood that are in the process of 'healing'. Wood is exposed on a vertical plane in one case and a horizontal plane in the other two. I covered them with putty in a similar fashion as I did this one.

I plan to leave the putty in place on all until leaf drop of the end of the 2020 growing season before removing it to observe the effects, unless it falls off sooner of its own accord.