need a little info

[oscar4749]

I have some black walnut trees that are 6to8in.dbh. What my question is,these trees are bent at different spots. Will they straighten out as they grow older.Or should I just thin them out now?

[Texas Ranger]

Without seeing them, hard to say.  Walnut responds well to early pruning, is it possible that what you are looking at is a pruned fork in a younger tree?  Walnut prone to fork, particularly in an area here a top bud may die.  Pruning puts that dip in them, they do grow out of it.

[oscar4749]

Yes I should have known.I'll get pictures tomorrow it's getting too dark now.
This brings up another question I'll ask tomorrow with pictures.

[Ianab]

At 6" dia the tree is pretty much fixed in that shape. A growing tip or sapling (1"?) may be able to pull itself straight again after some mishap, but a tree at that size won't

If the woods need thinning, then those bent ones make the choice easier. Take them out now, and free up the space for better formed trees to grow.

Ian

[Rocky_Ranger]

Without seeing them, hard to say.  Walnut responds well to early pruning, is it possible that what you are looking at is a pruned fork in a younger tree?  Walnut prone to fork, particularly in an area here a top bud may die.  Pruning puts that dip in them, they do grow out of it.

TR, what the heck ya been up to?  I hear from Charlie now and again, mostly email and such.  Got caught up in that foot of snow in Arkansas on Christmas day, more than I've seen here in AZ this winter...... :new_year:

[oscar4749]

I finnaly got pictures.They arn't the best but maybe you'll get the idea.

  

  

 

[beenthere]

These won't straighten out any more. Look to be too old for that.
Maybe an ice storm or three in their lifetime.

[Ianab]

Hard to tell the scale, but will you get 8ft logs out of the straight sections? If you will, then it's probably worth leaving the trees to grow. After they are cut down part of the loggers skill is bucking the best logs from the tree, taking into account bends and other defects.

Also the bends are going to be less noticeable on a larger tree. (They are unlikely to bend more over time). A 6" log with a 6" bow in it is obvious. A 24" log with a 6" bow is not so bad, especially if the bow can be mostly cut out by careful log making.

By all means if you are thinning, take out the worst ones for sure, but the larger trees in those shots should still make useful saw logs in the future. If you did take them out and start again, there is no guarantee that you would get a better result next time. Like Beenthere suggests, it could have been storm damage to the growing tips of the saplings in years gone by. The tree has corrected this as best it can, and continued to grow. Not perfectly, but it's not a disaster either.

Remember it's the first butt log that's the most valuable, what happens after that has less effect on the value of the tree. So choose the ones that are best first 8-16ft up. If it has a major problem 4 - 6 ft up, then it's never going to be a valuable tree.

Ian