ABSTRACT
Arboriculture provides opportunities for assessing long-term tree-environment interactions. We assessed the surrounding context, scars, re-sprouts, and absolute width-growth of twenty-four Salix fragilis trees pollarded by the grandfather, father, and son of one family covering 120 years, quantifying the effects of cut, microorganism-infection, and body-accumulated photosynthate on the pollards’ resprout-and-growth. We determined pollard diameter, age, scars-number (C) and basal area (CAB), median times pruned (Cmn), putrid holes number (H), cumulative length (HL), and length-average (HAV), and two indicators of remaining photosynthate (Q, and QAV). Response variables were number of re-sprouts (RN), re-sprout-basal area (RAB), and trunk’s Absolute Growth (AG; Classic (MLR), and Bayesian Multiple Linear Regressions (BMLR)). The pollards experienced similar incoming light, water, CO2, nutrients, and temperatures. Higher C-values for 40-year-old pollards produced higher H-values (Linear Regression, R2 = 0.54, p = 0.02; Bayesian Linear Regression: BF10 = 3.79, n = 8) suggesting more infection when cutting. RN slightly changed in response to life-long accumulated CAB, Cmn, H, and HAV (BMLR, BF10 from 1.10 to 2.82, n = 24). RAB slightly changed responding to C, H, HAV, Q, and QAV (BMLR, BF10 = 1.11; MLR: p < 0.05, n = 24). AG declined in response to Cmn (MLR, R2 = 0.38, p < 0.001, n = 24). Thus, under favourable conditions severely wounded-and-infected trees keep re-sprouting and growing, even if growth is reduced.
Acknowledgment
To the anonymous land-owner allowing us to study the trees planted and cared for by himself, his father, and grandfather.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Supplemental material
Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/03071375.2024.2358675
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Edgardo I. Garrido-Pérez
Edgardo I. Garrido-Pérez. Staff researcher at the Coiba Scientific Station – Coiba AIP (Panama). He studied for a PhD at the Centro de Investigación Científica de Yucatán (Mexico) and the Goettingen University (Germany). He is a forest (ethno)ecologist studying the effects of human intervention on plant communities, populations, and individuals applying the Historical Ecology approach in both Europe and the Neotropics.
Edgardo Díaz-Ferguson
Edgardo Díaz-Ferguson. Head of the Coiba Scientific Station – Coiba AIP (Panama). He gained his PhD at the University of Cádiz (Spain) and has undertaken Post-Docs at Washington, Florida, Georgia, and Auburn Universities (USA). He is a marine ecologist and geneticist with more than 22 years of experience studying both basic and human-determined changes of marine wildlife.