Photo du jour: Chateaubriand championne de l’émondage

9 comments

1. On comprendra ici que les arbres sont émondés pour dégager les fils et heureusement que c’est fait pour un bon moment. Ils ne devraient pas refaire la job avant au moins 4 ou 5 ans. Ainsi il y a une économie parce que revenir tous les ans pour n’émonder que peu ça revient sans doute au même prix. Bien évidemment en procédant de la sorte on supprime l’esthétique des arbres, ça se voit, mais on s’assure surtout et avant tout qu’il n’y aura pas de panne électrique avant un long moment.

2. Does anyone know if the trees likely grow back in (and over the lines)? I think I’ve seen some large trees in certain neighbourhood allow lines to go perfectly through them… I guess I’m just hoping as this is pretty much what my street looks like.

3. Yes Eric they do some day. I believe it tooke some 10 years on my parents’ street.

   On facebook, a friend commented: « Unfortunately the problem lies in the fact these lines cannot be buried meanwhile municipalities still want alignment trees. Sadly you cannot have one without sacrificing the other. This tree was trimmed according to BNQ norms for arboriculture. But with electricity your strategies are limited…severely to say the least. Nice picture. »

4. Thanks for the answer – why can’t the lines be buried? I’m guessing it’s a cost issue as some streets are and some aren’t.

5. Ghastly.

   I suppose they also resort to “Les Émondeurs St-Germain”, criminal tree-destroyers.

6. In my opinion the trees are trimmed completely arbitrarily depending on the particular obsession of the foreman. On Wison on NDG, where I will live, one foreman (woman) seemed to take a particular pleasure in reducing a beautiful tree to bare branches even where there were no wires. Some years previously another team did the job with evident respect.

   I would very much like to know what the norms are, what training the teams have, and what supervison is provided? Where can this be found?

7. @David, my friend writes:

   « Technically speaking the City of Montreal hires trained arborists with at least a DEP in arboriculture to maintain their alignment trees. Unfortunately I can’t tell you what kind of background the foreman have nor can I tell you their concrete standards as I do not work for Montreal personally. »

8. « However in the municipality that I work for, all of our work is carried out externally on contract by an urban forestry company. In the case where municipal work is completed by a contractor we do issue a contract that clearly stipulates how trees are to be trimmed. The work is then inspected periodically by a foreman. We follow these set of norms for all plantation, stump removal, felling, pruning and trimming http://www.siaq.org/_texte​s/BNQ0605-200_arboricole.p​df In principal this is how things should be done (your blog post specifically asked if there are any norms that dictate how trees should be maintained) In practice, whether or not those norms are respected is entirely a different story. I’ll have to take a look next time I go for a walk..I’m on Decarie ;)

   Another thing to take into account when a tree is drastically pruned (provided there are no aerial lines), did the tree canopy need to be reduced to compensate for an injury sustained at the trunk or gradual decay? Where some of the larger branches cracked? Or- the variable I have the biggest problem with- did the severe trimming occur because of pressure from the proprietor of the house? Sometimes a municipality is forced to make compromises in order to keep the tree alive at the expense of its aesthetic value. And well…sometimes the arborist simply did a shitty job. I’ll check it out! »

9. Je pense qu’il s’agit plûtot d’élagage que d’émondage, puisque le but premier est de ne pas nuire à l’homme…et à Hydro.