Stop Topping Trees

The practice of topping (also referred to as stubbing, dehorning, pollarding, heading, and by several other euphemisms) has risen to crisis proportions nationally over the last decade. Topping has become the urban forest’s major threat, dramatically shortening the lifespan of trees and creating hazardous trees in high-traffic areas.

Topping won't work to keep trees small. After a deciduous tree is topped, its growth rate increases. It grows back rapidly in an attempt to replace its missing leaf area. It needs all of its leaves so that it can manufacture food for the trunk and roots. It won’t slow down until it reaches the same size it was before it was topped. It takes at maximum few years before your tree returns to near its original size. Topping can't make a significant size difference not for long. The species or type of tree you have determines its size. The sight of a topped tree is offensive to many people. The freshly-sawed look is just the beginning of the eyesore; the worst is yet to come, as the tree regrows a broom of ugly, straight suckers and sprouts. Topping destroys the winter silhouette of a tree. Many topped trees are considered a total loss.

Many people top their trees because they think it will make them safer. Topping creates hazardous trees. New limbs made from the sucker or shoot regrowth are weakly attached and break easily in wind or snow storms even many years later when they are large and heavy. A regrown limb never has the structural integrity of the original.

Topping makes you appear to be a cruel or foolish person. You may top a tree to create a water view, but really you created a view of a butchered tree with water in the background.