Am I the only one who thinks pruning paint does more harm than good?

Last spring I watched a retired arborist at a workshop in Portland refuse to use wound dressing on a 40-year-old oak limb he cut, and he went off about how sealing cuts traps rot inside. I've had customers beg me to paint their cuts on ash trees, and I'm starting to wonder if we're just making people feel better or actually helping the tree - what do you all think about wound paints?

2 comments

2 Comments

wade7802d ago

Used to swear by the stuff myself, painted every single cut I made for years. Then I helped a buddy clean up storm damage on a massive old maple and he showed me a limb he cut 5 years ago that still had the paint flaking off and all this wet, dark rot underneath. Changed my mind completely. Now I only use it on oaks during the active oak wilt season here in the Midwest, and even then I'm careful. Most of the time trees just need a clean cut and they'll seal themselves up way better than any paint can.

jade_butler2d ago

Double down on what wade780 said about clean cuts. I've been watching the research from the International Society of Arboriculture and pretty much every study I've seen says pruning paint slows down the tree's natural callusing process. The tree builds a protective zone around the wound on its own, but paint stops that from happening right. Your buddy's story about the maple limb sounds pretty typical, I've pulled off old paint on job sites and found nothing but decay underneath more times than I can count.