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- ARTICLE Girdling Roots
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Girdling Roots
What is a girdling root? Essentially, it is a root that grows around the trunk of a tree and chokes out the tree stem tissue over time as it expands. This eventually kills root and stem tissue and causes canopy dieback and eventually death in the area of the canopy associated with the roots in question. This eventually leads to tree death in many cases.
What causes girdling roots? Girdling roots are almost always caused by planting ‘containerized’ nursery stock. In nursery containers, tree roots grow around the inside of the containers in a circular fashion. Unfortunately, when the trees are removed from the containers and planted, often these circular roots are not pulled away from the root ball.
Over time, if containerized stock is planted without pulling the circling roots away from the root ball, they will continue to grow and expand. As the roots and the tree stem expands, and they become sizeable and woody, they eventually put extreme pressure against each other (trunk wood vs root wood) causing tissue damage and restricting growth and vascular conduction.
If this problem is addressed in younger trees, often it can be corrected by severing the girdling root(s) with minimal impact to the tree. Unfortunately, if girdling roots are left until the tree is older, it is often unwise to attempt removing them because they are responsible for major uptake and can irreversibly stress the tree in certain instances.
If larger girdling roots are to be removed from the tree, we recommend cutting them in the fall as opposed to the summer months, We usually recommend deep root fertilization at the same time for maximum root stimulation to compensate for the root loss. It is generally not a good idea to remove roots like this during drought conditions.