Seems we’ve had a rough enough winter that the local rabbit colony took to stripping the bark off several of the smaller apple tree saplings that we have growing in our back yard. http://picasaweb.google.com/BKolesari/WinterWonderlandThaw
How bad is the damage and are trees able to overcome this type of destruction?
Aside from wrapping or fencing in the future, is there anything I can do now to help reverse the damage?
Thanks.
By the way, the pics were taken with the S6000FD by Fuji that I was talked into buying by a few members of the SDMB. It’s a great camera. These are really the first photos I was able to take the camera out and stretch it’s legs with. It’s been a cold and rough winter so far, not many photo ops.
The living part of the tree is just under the bark. It’s called sapwood. If your local Energizer Bunnies managed to destroy the sapwood, and it appears they have, you can kiss your saplings goodbye.
I suggest you contact your local UW Extension office for help. They are in the best position to offer concrete advice.
It looks like the rabbits have mostly attacked the suckers. If you planted trees that were grafted (as most commercial apple trees are), you don’t want to let the suckers develop anyway. For that matter, you don’t want to let the suckers develop even if you have a native, non-grafted tree.
The suggestion to contact your extension office is an excellent one.
And, perhaps most important of all, those are VERY CUTE DOGS! Samoyeds???
You really need to trim back all those suckers anyway, like freckafree said. If the bark is off all the way around the trunk that trunk is a goner, but the larger trunks don’t look that bad. They’ll be fine, just put a cage around them, or tree wrap around the larger trunks.
No, I’m talking about the rabbit-chewed picture. It doesn’t look like a “tree.” As a previous poster mentioned, it looks like a bunch of suckers, which really need to be cut off (they are from the rootstock, and not the graft). It looks like the bigger “trunks” are not fatally damaged, so you might want to cut all the suckers off and leave them for the rabbits.
The rabbits did you a favor, because those shoots need to be removed from the area of the larger actually tree trunk. Put a rabbit or chicken wire fence cage around the trunks for the winter, because rabbits will girdle trees that are older too. Remember the snow will raise the reach of the rabbits. Any tree that has more than 25% of the tree diameter girdled should just be replaced when it happens. In the future they will grow slower, and the heart wood rot out. The layer removed transports the food down to the roots, and water to the branches, which limits the tree size and health. Only small amounts of damage are going to leave a healthy tree in the future. They girdle trees to kill them off and later cut them to clear land.
