Tree Wounds and Their Treatment 
HOW TO CARE FOR YOUR INJURED TREES SO AS TO PREVENT OR CURE THE ROT- 
PRODUCING FACTORS THAT ARE ALWAYS PRESENT—VARIOUS KINDS OF WOUNDS 
by Elbert Peets 
W OUNDS are perhaps the most frequent primary cause of 
the decay and death of trees. The vast majority of the 
destructive rot-producing fungi can make their entrance into the 
framework of the tree only through wounds. By wounds I mean 
all exposed surfaces of wood, all interruptions in the normal bark 
covering. Wounds are not 
simply esthetically displeasing, 
marring, for instance, the fine 
texture of the bark, nor do 
they merely interfere more or 
less seriously with the physio¬ 
logical processes of the tree. 
Wounds are breaches in the 
tree's great wall of defense, 
its bark, laying the precious 
treasures of its wood open to 
the unresisted attack of its 
thousand omnipresent ene¬ 
mies. If you come upon the 
brown shelf-like fruiting bod¬ 
ies of certain rot fungi in the 
woods on a bright day in fall, 
you will see coming from their 
lower surfaces little clouds of 
brown dust. Each particle of 
this fine dust is a spore which 
has the power to grow and 
cause decay and to reproduce 
the mother plant. How cer¬ 
tain it is, then, that every 
wound in a tree will sooner or 
later become infected by some 
tree disease, and that every 
wounded tree is a tree in dan¬ 
ger. 
There are two general pur¬ 
poses or principles which gov¬ 
ern the treatment of wounds. 
We must handle wounds in 
such a way as, first, to prevent 
the entrance of decav and of 
insects, and, second, to facili¬ 
tate their healing. The first purpose is of more immediate im¬ 
portance, on account of the slowness of the healing process, which 
often cannot take place at all if decay precedes it. The second is, 
however, of great ultimate importance, because healing entirely 
obviates the danger of infection and helps the tree physiologically 
and physically. 
Any discussion of dressings for wounds must be prefaced by a 
determination of the things the dressing is to be called on to do 
and of the influences which tend to prevent the proper discharge 
of its functions. 
The dressing is put on the wound in order to prevent weather, 
insects and fungi from getting at the exposed wood. The 
weather does but little harm per se, but it is the invariable advance 
agent of fungi. To be good, a dressing must cover the wound 
completely, bridging such small cracks as there may be in it, must 
take tenacious hold on the wood, weather well, and not crack or 
separate from the wood. It must, in addition, be fairly easy to ap¬ 
ply, and another consideration is that it must if possible be cheap. 
That it is hard to find a satisfactory dressing is largely due to 
the kind of surface to which it is applied. Because the surface 
to which it is applied is usually moist it is hard to make the dress¬ 
ing adhere, and because the surface is sure to check it is hard to 
get a permanent covering. 
Painting a wound in a tree is 
absolutely unlike painting a 
piece of seasoned timber. It 
is sometimes suggested that 
the dressing ought to prevent 
evaporation and the checking 
of the wood, but in practice it 
has been found that no dress¬ 
ing will prevent the checking 
of fresh-cut wood. The wisest 
thing to do is not to try to 
put on a permanent dressing 
until the first checking has 
taken place. A heavy dress¬ 
ing will then retard further 
checking and may not be frac¬ 
tured by such checking as does 
occur. 
The various materials 
which have some value as ap¬ 
plications to wounds can be 
divided into two groups : those 
which sterilize the wound and 
cause the death, through their 
fungicidal properties, of such 
spores as fall on the wound 
while the materials persist, 
and those materials which fill 
and cover the wood, perma¬ 
nently preventing the access 
of spores to it. Some of these 
last have incidental antiseptic 
qualities. 
To the former class belong 
all sprays used against fun¬ 
gous diseases, such as solu¬ 
tions of copper sulphate and the lime-sulphur wash. Whenever 
trees are sprayed with a fungicide the nozzle should be held for 
an instant against each wound, and the trunk should be sprayed 
as carefully as the bearing wood. The copper solution is made 
by dissolving an ounce of copper sulphate in a gallon of water. 
Other antiseptics of value in dressing wounds are corrosive sub¬ 
limate, dissolved in water at the rate of two ounces to fifteen 
gallons, and formalin, one ounce to two gallons. 
The antiseptic materials used in wood preservation are also of 
value in treating wounds. Foremost among them are coal tar, 
creosote and carbolineum, which is also a coal tar product, dis¬ 
tilled off at a higher temperature. Creosote comes in several con¬ 
sistencies, the heaviest of them requiring heating. A so-called 
creosote is made from the tar which is a by-product of the manu¬ 
facture of water-gas from petroleum, but it has no antiseptic 
value. In buying creosote demand a guarantee that it is distilled 
from coal tar. Carbolineum has been the center of much contro- 
An oak with a large bark wound. The decayed bark has been cut away and the 
sound wood treated with creosote and tar 
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