Why prune your Boston MA office plants?

When pruning young trees the emphasis should be producing strong structures, in your Boston, MA. interiorscapes.

Proper pruning cuts are made at a node, the point at which one branch or twig attaches to another. In the spring of the year growth begins at buds, and twigs grow until a new node is formed. The length of a branch between nodes is called an internode.

The most common office plant that needs pruning is your Ficus trees, Benjamina, Nitida etc..

1. Make a small wedge shaped cut on the underside of the branch just on the branch side of the stem collar. This will break the bark at that point and prevent a tear from running along the bark and stem tissue.

2. Somewhat farther along the branch, starting at the top of the branch, cut all the way through the branch leaving a stub end.

3. Finally, make a third cut parallel to and just on the branch side of the of the stem collar to reduce the length of the stub as much as possible.

The most common types of pruning are:

1. Crown Thinning

Crown thinning, primarily for hardwoods, is the selective removal of branches to increase light penetration and air movement throughout the crown of a tree. The intent is to maintain or develop a tree's structure and form.

To avoid unnecessary stress and prevent excessive production of epicormic sprouts, no more than one-quarter of the living crown should be removed at a time. If it is necessary to remove more, it should be done over successive years.

This procedure is especially applied to your indoor office Ficus trees.

Branches with strong U-shaped angles of attachment should be retained . Branches with narrow, V-shaped angles of attachment often form included bark and should be removed .

Included bark forms when two branches grow at sharply acute angles to one another, producing a wedge of inward-rolled bark between them.

Lateral branches should be no more than one-half to three-quarters of the diameter of the stem at the point of attachment.

Avoid producing "lion's tails," tufts of branches and foliage at the ends of branches, caused by removing all inner lateral branches and foliage. Lion's tails can result in sunscalding, abundant epicormic sprouts, and weak branch structure and breakage. Branches that rub or cross another branch should be removed as illustrated above photo in one of our interior indoor office locations.

Conifers that have branches in whorls and pyramidal crowns rarely need crown thinning except to restore a dominant leader. Occasionally, the leader of a tree may be damaged and multiple branches may become codominant. Select the strongest leader and remove competing branches to prevent the development of codominant stems again as seen in our above photo.

Plantscape Designs Inc. yearly or if needed seasonally prunes many of our larger Boston MA  office plants.