Heard a guy at the lumber yard say 'trees don't have feelings'

I was grabbing some new rope at the supply house on Tuesday and this older logger was telling a young guy that trees don't have feelings so stop babying them. It got me thinking about how we all treat trees different based on who taught us. I see some arborists that go way too rough on removals and leave nasty stubs while others are way too slow on a simple dead oak. Where do you draw the line between being efficient and being respectful to the tree?

3 comments

3 Comments

thomas8622mo agoMost Upvoted

Whoa hold up, you got a little mixed up there. A dead oak isn't gonna bounce back from anything, its already gone. The way you handle a dead tree is totally different from a live one. With a dead tree you're mostly worried about safety and getting it down without wrecking stuff, not about the tree's health because it doesn't have any. The whole "rough handling shuts them down" thing only really applies to live trees that can still respond to damage. If you hack up a healthy maple in the wrong season yeah you might cause it to struggle, but a dead tree doesn't care about any of that since its already done.

oliver24213d ago

I hear what you're saying Thomas, but I actually see it a bit differently. You mentioned "a dead tree doesn't care about any of that since its already done" and that's the part I'd push back on. Even with a dead tree, the way you handle the wood can affect what happens around it, especially if you're talking about the soil and the roots underground. A dead oak that gets yanked out roughly can tear up the ground and mess with nearby live trees' roots, which might cause issues later. Plus, if you're cutting it down and leaving the stump, how you treat that stump can decide whether it rots cleanly or becomes a hazard. I think it's less about the tree's health at that point and more about the whole area around it, but the handling still matters more than some folks give it credit for.

brooke5332mo ago

Got me wondering though do you think that way of treating them has any actual effect on how the tree bounces back from a removal or is it more about the person's own peace of mind? I mean, I've seen trees get absolutely hammered with a chainsaw and still push out new growth like nothing happened, but then other times the same rough handling seems to just shut them down completely. Maybe it depends on the species or the time of year or something like that.

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