Hi, I bought a maple (similar to Norwegian maple) stump about a month ago, and the seller chopped off the apparently dead top part of the stump for me. A rather crude diagonal chainsaw chop, not quite what I had in mind. There was minimal bleeding of sap.
Since then, some leaves on the two branches closest to the chop, one level with the chop and one about 100mm beneath, have gone a bit brown, typical of water starvation. The other branches are fine, so it is not just leaf burn.
It's almost like the sap flow has been disturbed by the chop. In which case, the sap flow through the xylem is not just a straight vertical line, but affected by the xylem to the sides and above the branch?? Any thoughts / experience about this?
This is not a critical issue, the tree will recover, but I'm curious. Good to learn lessons prior to carrying out trunk chops on other trees.
PS Just so no one worries, my own trunk chops will be rather more well-considered, with a sharp handsaw, straight across not diagonal, and carried out in very early spring.
