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Every year just before hurricane season, this happens. I see way too many green palm tree fronds being removed. As if to justify the practice, it is given the title of “hurricane cutting,” which is a violation (subject to fines) of Collier County Land Development Code 91-102, as well as a violation of the International Society of Arboriculture standards.

Just a terminology check as to why I call palms “trees.” Most palm species have a single woody stem, and even though most species don’t have branches — a tree requirement by some experts — they cast some overhead shade. If it takes a chainsaw or a pickup truck to remove it, in my book, it’s a tree.

Others remind us that palms are in the same group as grass plants, the Monocotyledon class, and like to call palms grasses, not trees. Usually we think of the other class of flowering plants, the Dicotyledons, as the “tree” species. But try and mow a palm!

I digress; sorry. Many people have adopted the more acceptable 9 to 3 o’clock (canopy outline) pruning approach to palm maintenance. However, even better is the selective removal of only the dead or obviously-going-to-die fronds and the flower or fruit stalks. There is no need to remove a green frond. See University of Florida extension recommendations:

collier.ifas.ufl.edu/CommHort/MaintainPlants.shtml#Pruning

There are fact sheets there in Spanish as well.

“Hurricane cutting” is the removal of too many green fronds, usually leaving a palm canopy that has the shape of a water color paint brush, usually in a 10 o’clock to 2 o’clock, or less — 11 to 1 — canopy outline. To paraphrase Ed Gilman, UF/IFAS tree researcher, “The only function this poor pruning practice serves is to transfer money from one bank account to another.”

The coconut palms in the accompanying picture were severely overpruned. The removal of so much of the frond bases (note the “shiners” or white spots where the fronds were cut off) compromises the strength of the entire head’s multilayer structure, which is pretty well designed to absorb the shock of strong winds. These palms had nary a green frond following Wilma. There may have been a microburst of strong wind on this landscape, making the damage worse.

However, the au naturel, unpruned coconuts within the same block only had a few fronds kinked out of shape. They fared much better than the hurricane-cut palms. Besides making the crown more prone to high wind damage, overpruning will cause the development of a severe narrowing of the trunk, called pencil-pointing, which could lead to a weak point and trunk failure, in arboriculture lingo.

Palms that were the least disturbed by Wilma’s high winds were, of course, the apparently unfazed cabbage palms, Canary Island date palms, foxtail palms and short-statured palms such as arecas and spindle palms. Royal palm fronds seem designed to break off in high winds, but the royals don’t uproot as much as the overplanted queen palms. Royal palms that were pretty much frondless refoliated fairly rapidly, within six to 12 months after Hurricane Wilma.

Another frequently asked question , is, “Should I dose the injured palms with copper, fungicides and insecticides to stave off bud rot?” There is no research to indicate bactericides, fungicides nor insecticides will help the wind-damaged palms. See the new tip sheet, “Hurricane-Damaged Palms in the Landscape: Care after the Storm” in the recent updates section at: flrec.ifas.ufl.edu/pdfs/HurricaneDamagedPalms.pdf

Since there was not a big outcry about suffering or dying palms that were not treated from bud rot following hurricanes Charley or Wilma, my seat-of-the-pants answer is, “Don’t worry about it!” Let the palms recover on their own. An insecticide application is definitely unnecessary on coconut palms because they are rarely on the menu of the dreaded palmetto weevil, which attacks primarily cabbage and Canary Island date palms. Again, these treatments follow the similar function voiced by Gilman above.

Two more excellent Web sites on this subject are:

www.hurricanecut.com/thirdbayshore/page20.htm

edis.ifas.ufl.edu/pdffiles/EP/EP29100.pdf

To minimize the chance of tree abuse, hire a certified arborist, but even then be sure you have it in writing as to how you want your palm trees pruned. See

www.isa-arbor.com/findArborist/verifyArbByLoc.aspx

This will give you the names of local certified arborists.

Doug Caldwell is also a landscape entomologist and works for the Cooperative Extension Service in Collier County. E-mail: dougbug@ufl.edu. Call 353-4244, ext. 203. For updates on the Southwest Florida Horticulture Learning Center and more landscape pest management details, visit: collier.ifas.ufl.edu.