In the Trees of Hawaii classroom, Abner Undan demonstrates a resistograph, used to detect hollows or rotten interiors of trees that could threaten the life of the tree and endanger people and nearby buildings. What butchers armed with sharp objects euphemistically call pruning this certified arborist and president of Trees of Hawaii calls mutilation. The urban jungle is a brutal world where more than 90 percent of trees have been damaged by improper pruning, according to Undan, a world where property owners, out of ignorance or wilfulness, hire people to kill their trees. It's followed by a lesson in the basics.
People forget that trees make their own food through a process called photosynthesis.
He's not trying to be pedantic. Sure we all learn that in grade school. But the evidence he sees suggests most of us forget it. Wounded trees Topping persists in Hawaii despite widespread criticism of the tactic, which the International Society of Arborculture calls the most harmful pruning practice known. Topping is the indiscriminate cutting of tree branches, often eliminating 50 to 100 percent of foliage.