Beware The Leaf Clot

The top picture is a bur oak leaf clot looking down a tube. You cannot see the shoot and that is bad.










The second is a side view of an Autumn Blaze Maple leaf clot.

Leaf clots are bad. They prevent gas exchange and can trap the shoot. Always prune to a single stem.

Temped to jam the foliage in the tube?

Don't own a pruner?

Don't have time to prune?










Here's more detail.

Have to admit I love the next picture - and not just because the growth and form benefits of Plantra Vented Tree Tubes are so obvious. The other reason is that there are so many lessons from these two trees.

At the bottom you can see the "leaf clot" I want to talk about. The a shoot escaped the clot and screamed to the top of the emerged and formed a new area of dense foliage.

Standard Plantra recommendations are to cut back to a single stem before installing the tube. There are three reasons for this recommendation.


Structure: First is that we want to produce a straight single stem. If you want the tree to live a long productive life, you have to get a sound structure and that means a single straight trunk.

Root System Energy: The most important thing you purchase in a seedling is the carbohydrate stored in the root system. It matters how this energy is used. If there are three shoots the energy is divided between the three and you get three short stems producing leaves that compete for light and CO2. We want one shoot to command that energy. The key to the Plantra Growth Engine is to rapidly fill the tube to the top with an array of spaced out leaves that do not overlap. We want leaves fully expanded and intercepting light through the wall with the stoma on the underside wide open and absorbing CO2 from the humid-CO2 rich air the vents move past the stoma on backside of the leaf.


Leaf Clots: A tangle of leaves can trap the shoots. In the confined space of a tube bunched leaves can form an impenetrable blockage.


Please PRUNE Preventively