What's with these vines?

[ohsoloco]

Over the past few months I've had some more time to wander around in my woods, and now that the leaves are off the trees it's much easier to see that there are a lot of vines growing from the floor up into my trees.  Some of these vines are over 4" in diameter.  Not sure what they are exactly, but most go waaay up into the tops of my trees.  Question is, should I be doing anything to these, like severing the vine at the ground?  

[Stephen_Wiley]

Yikes...................... ???

Around here, vines with no leaves climbing up trees this time of year are most likely 'Poison Oak'.

IFn ya loose your immunity to em............your in for a bad case of the itches.s.s.s.s.s.s.s.s

More information would be helpful for identification.  Can you post any pics?

[Texas Ranger]

do the vines have "roots" holding them to the stem of the tree, or are they free hanging?
 ???

[Kirk_Allen]

I don't recall what vines we have around here but they are as you descibed...........BIG.

We cut them every chance we can at the ground.  If let go they will choke off a trees tops and kill the tree according to our state forester.

When we go on a walk through the woods we always bring a machete and whack every one we see.

[leweee]

Vines are to trees like weeds are to crops. Direct competition for light & nutrients. In our area we have two main types Grape & Virgina  Creeper. If you want  to grow timber, you got  to cut some vines. As part of woodlot management & bio-diversity, we sever them every two years. It don't kill'em ,just sets them back & gives the trees a chance to get ahead. ;D

[Ron Wenrich]

Most likely its grape.  Cut it.  

Bittersweet is starting to get to be a big problem in my area.  Ornamental gone wild and hard to contol.  It has a green vine, but I haven't seen it that big.

Poison ivy and virginia creeper stay attached to the tree, in most cases.

[hosslog]

I would guess wild grapes.CUT THEM. Besides killing the trees they make it down right dangerous to cut the trees.  If that is in the plans. The vines will grow from top to top tying the trees together so when the trees are cut you'll have trouble getting them down. When they do come down the vines tend to pull branches from places you least expect.

[ohsoloco]

When I had the pup out to play fetch this morning did notice one small vine that has attatched itself to the trunk of a tree with little "roots", but this isn't the vine I'm talking about.  Some of them are a few feet or more from a tree, and they twist about and then run right up the tree, but are free hanging.  Almost clocked myself in the head with one of those four inchers after cutting it off  :(    Can't really see the foliage of the vines, since they don't "leaf out" (?) until the tops of the trees, but they have flaky "bark" on 'em which is kinda brown, and I wanna say it's reddish underneath, but I'd have to wander up and take another look to be positive about that.  Sounds like they should all be cut no matter what they are.  

[Phorester]

Your last description sounds like grapevines, ohsoloco.  Everybody that said cut'em are right for growing timber.

But........, if you're interested in wildlife you might want to leave a couple growing.  Wild grapes are an excellent food source for lots of wildlife species.  One wildlife management recommendation is to encourage these natural grape arbors by cutting neighboring junk trees that are shading out the grapevines. The extra sunlight produces more grapes. Another thing you can do is to girdle the tree with the vine, so the tree leaves no longer shade out the vine, just the opposite that you want to do for timber production.

Another technique is to fell the tree with the vines into a neighboring tree, so the neighboring tree will support it.  You don't have to sever it from the stump, just lean it into the tree next to it.  That not only gives more growing space for the vine since it can now grow into the next tree, but also opens up the vine to more sunlight, since felling the tree with the vine creates more sunlight from the opening created by the tree now leaning instead of standing straight up. If the vines are growing on a junk tree anyway, you might want to encourage them.

I have my hard hat on for all the rocks I know are gonna come my way......

[beenthere]

Phorester
 ;D IMO you deserve the 'rocks'.  ;D  I be lookin' for one now.

But, doesn't sound like a safe way to purposely leave the woods, with a tree hanging up in another.    

But I've heard other management plans just as far out (IMO). One in Oregon where the USFS would cut two perfectly good trees (per acre, if I remember correctly) to lay on the ground to rot, just to be friendly to the needs of the ground to have rotting wood. That was in addition to the 'den' trees left standing. Not sure much of anything actually was removed to pay for the logger to even be there doing the work. I recall when the forester explained that management plan, the gasps from the enviro's that were there from CA were quite noticeable. He explained it was there ilk that caused that plan to be designed that way.
Now, this is just my opinion and slant on what I think the trees in the forests are for, certainly not what everyone thinks.  

[ohsoloco]

Took another walk up there today before work, and now that you've all mentioned wild grapes, they do look a lot like the grape vines my dad planted years ago.  Those things really have a hold on those trees, I could swing on em like Tarzan  :D

[rebocardo]

What I have noticed in GA is if the tree is heavily covered in vines, there is nothing you can really do because a lot of the vines's root system is unseen under the bark and the tree looks like swiss cheese from the roots under the bark. Vines are the start of a bug infestation that can spread to other tree.

If you are going to chop them, take out a good three to four inch chunk at the bottom of the tree and then peel the vine away from the lower part of the tree and above the cut. I am for spraying the bottom with Round Off or a good weed killer.

[cutterboy]

ohsoloco, those grape vines are really strong. A few years ago I cut through a 12" ash tree. The tree fell off the stump but it didn't fall down. It just swung around this way, then swung around that way, back and forth. All the while I was running for my life, first this way then that way  then finally out of range. Then I saw that a grape vine had grown up the tree next to the one I cut and somehow jumped over to that tree and now was holding it up. I had to cut the other tree down to get the first one to fall. I would never leave a tree hanging or leaning on another just to grow some DanG wild grapes! Now I cut every vine I can find.

[KENROD]

From your description they are wild grape. I would cut them if they are growing in your saw timber. However, I do like to leave some growing for wild life. They are deffinulty a hazard when logging, but they can be delt with if your keep yer eyes open and know there their. Besides they make great jelly and home made wine (if ya kin find some ya kin reach). ;)

[leweee]

Wildlife..... making wine... I get it ??? : ;D

[Ed_K]

 I do a lot of Timberstand Improvement. A yr ago I did an 80 acre piece of nothing but cutting grapevine. The largest stem was 10". My forester said it would be 7 to 10 yrs before the piece will be safe for a timberharvest. Its ready to cut now with big DBH timber  :(. I hate thinking of the wait  >:(. Theres not many jobs I do where we leave the vines, but I do some.
 We have real problems with Bittersweet & Virginia Creaper too. Some have to be cut and then followed up with roundup to kill it.
 Don't drink the water from the grape vine if you cut during summer, it'll just make you thirstier  :.

[Phorester]

Whoa, boys, yer getting the wrong idea about my idea of leaving & managing a few grapevines in your woods!   I expected the rocks to be thrown because I suggested leaving the vines, not because of cutting trees.

First, I didn't feel I had to go into every nuance about cutting trees safely. First rule of cutting trees is you should only do something you are comfortable doing. If somebody is leery of the safety about cutting a particular tree for whatever reason, grapevines included, then of course don't do it. If it scares you to cut a tree down, you shouldn't be doing it.

Cutterboy, you didn't cut that tree to manage grapevines, you cut it for some other reason. You'd done it differently if you were cutting it to manage that vine.   Notice I recommend leaving the tree attached to the stump,  to prevent it swinging like yours did.  But....., if it ain't safe, don't do it.

The fellow I saw demonstrate this used a wedge to guide the grapevine tree into it's neighbor. Directional felling. He left the hinge intact.  Felled the tree by knocking in the wedge with a sledge hammer. The treetop just laid gently into its neighbor about 15 feet away and stayed there, still attached solidly to its stump and hung up almost vertical solidly into the other tree.  It was also only about 12" diameter and maybe 40 feet tall. It wasn't a towering fat sawtimber tree. Dangerous to leave?  Not in that particular location.  Some locations it would be a risk.  So you don't do it there.  Also, there's leaning trees all over the woods here anyway because of drought, gypsy moth, and pine bark beetle mortality.  Landowners don't walk through the woods cutting every leaner down. They stay away from them until they fall on their own.

My point was that there's good reasons to leave a few grapevines alive in your woods, and for the people who want to, there's ways you can increase their output of grapes. You're exactly right about safety. And I also recommend they be cut off every good quality potentially high value tree.   Leave'em only only on the junk trees.

[Ron Scott]

Yes, use Integrated Resource Management (IRM) as Phorester said. Remove the grape vines from quality trees for timber stand improvement, but leave some for wildlife to maintain a diversity of habitat on the area.

[Larry]

Cut them grape vines on the crop trees and spray with RTU Toredon.  Seems like grape vines really like hanging on the walnuts.

I keep a little cheat sheet around that I use in the timber to manage for the critters.  Some of the things I'm supposed to look for are den trees, grape vines, forbs, fruit trees, and etc.  Give each one a score and compute the result.  Just wondering if this is what you guys are calling IRM?  

[redpowerd]

larry, your cheat sheet sounds interesting, got a little more detail?

whenever i cut a tree with a vine, i allways yank the vine out of the tree with a chain or cable, good and long. too short and it gets dangerous, swinging and snapping branches.
then you got a mess of vine all over, better than not knowing what the tree will do when it falls. wifey likes to tie them up into wreaths, anyway.

[Ianab]

You think you got vines  :D


The original host tree is long dead and slowly rotting out from inside the rata vines.


The original vine is now a tree in it's own right and will probably live on for several hundred years after the host rimu is gone.

Pictures from Egmont National Park - NZ

Ian

[ohsoloco]

You just keep them vines down there   ;)  Took a walk in the woods this afternoon with the pup, and I had my handsaw with me so I could cut some more of these vines.  Seems like for every vine I cut, I look around and see ten more that need done  :-/  If they're not very big I can pull them out of the tree, but those big'uns aren't going anywhere.  The only big one that broke on me was the one I decided to swing from...it dropped me when I was about 8-10 feet off the ground  :D

[SwampDonkey]

Salal is another vine with berries similar to virginia creeper. If you ever tried to cruise timber on Vancouver Island or the Queen Charlotte Islands you'll become real familiar with this vine. Its like a jungle in places and you can't even walk through the dang stuff. They creep up the trees and intertwine, what a nightmare. They are mostly in more open cedar and lodgepole pine woods that are quite damp and wet. They are also evergreen and the leaves are thick and leathery, green above, red below.

We also have the virginia creeper invading our area, its not a native plant in my province and usually was planted around old houses that have been abandoned on old farms.

In alders groves we have a species of climatis, which is also woody, but no bigger than an inch in diameter I think. It has white blooms and not as colorful as the cultivated ones folks grow on tralluses.

[Phorester]

OSOLOCO, you need to figure out how to make money off those grapevines. Lots of money.  Every week.  Then after you got dependent on the new income, everyone of'em would die on ya.

[leweee]

Think Christmas wreathes....Too Late ....never mind :
next year  cut & salvage the yearling ones for wreath foundations :

[IndyIan]

ohsoloco,
We have wild grape in alot of our fence rows and in one spot it has managed to get on top of some 15-20' trees.  I should take those one out sometime.  We do have one 8" dbh vine about 50' into our woods that goes about 50' up a 80' spruce but the vine doesn't seem able to climb any higher and is starting to get shaded out.  

Ola gathered up about 2 bushels of grapes last fall and we have canned grape juice and grape jelly.  The juice I dilute 1:4 with water and you get the nice grape taste without all the sugar from store bought juice.

Ian
  

[redpowerd]

whats that cheatsheet again, larry?
thanks,
jon

[Larry]

Right here...someplace. :-/  When I get it tracked down I'll get ya a copy.

[redpowerd]

thanks, wasnt sure you saw my original request, being on the bottom of the page. sounded interesting.
thanks
jon

[ohsoloco]

All the vines up there are at least 50 feet up, some higher than that.  Not sure how I could get my hands on any of em to make anything with  :-/

[SwampDonkey]

Larry the general term they use here is 'Habitat Features'

There are site specific habitat features like wetlands, rare plants, old growth forest, riparian forest, moose and deer cover.

There are other features such as scattered conifer in hardwood, visa versa, supercanopy trees, veteran trees

This is from the Ontario Tree Marking Guidelines. Here in New Brunswick it's rarely considered on private lands, but I always incorporate it into my Plans, even though most don't care. It's more like where is it, how much is there, and how do I get to it?

[OneWithWood]

Ohso, one thing to keep in mind when cutting vines, if the vine is taught don't sever it completely.  Leave just enough that it will break on its own and then get away from it.  I once cut a taught vine and regretted it.  I had a broken finger from a softball injury that was in a splint.  I could not do much so I decided to take my machete and whack some vines.  I sliced this taught one in a beech tree and as soon as it recoiled up I knew bad things were about to happen.  Sure enough, I looked up to see the dead branch coming straight down at me.  I instinctively put my hands up to shield my head.  That branch hit my finger square on reshaping that splint into an mangled mess, rebreaking my finger in the process.  I learned a new threshold for pain
 DanG, it makes my finger throb just telling about it!  I was lucky to escape with just a boogered finger.  Be careful adn look up before you cut.

[Frickman]

ohsoloco,

I'm sure you're familiar with the Ag Progress Days farm equipment show every August up near you in Rock Springs. They have a demonstration woodlot there where they give guided tours about woodland management. The foresters always take you by a grapevine, and ask what you would do with it. They can tell who is from the western part of the state as we usually recommend cutting it.

It seems though that in the central part of the state, where you're located, that grapevines are not as prevelant. The foresters decided to leave this grapevine alone. As others have already stated, if it is in a valuable crop tree you might want to remove it. If it is in a junk tree consider leaving it for wildlife.

[Frank_Pender]

Here on my place I leave the Poison Oak to grow and make walking sticks as it grows in size.  ;D  Another thing is that I use to have a colony of honey bees and the Poison Oak makes some of the best honey you ever tasted.   The other thing it does for me is to keep unwanted neighbors from walking through my forest.  ;) Some have even spoken to me about removing it so that they would nit get the itch.  My suggestion was to stay away. ;D

[SwampDonkey]

I don't mind anyone walking on my land and because I have no vehicle passible roads, just trails, I don't have to worry to much about anyone walking there. Most around here are lazy as home soldiers. But, I had one person who walked out and started tipping fir without permission and left garbage bags along my path like some kind of delinguent.

[BC_coops]

to remove some large Grape and Virginia Creeper (4" at root, 150' tall not unusual), I drilled a couple or three of 1/2" holes x 4" deep, at an angle, and filled the holes with full strength "Prosecutor." (Prosecutor, by Lesco, is the same as full strength commercial Roundup (not Home Depot Roundup))  Leave the tops of the vines connected to the roots for about 4 weeks.  The Prosecutor will cause the roots to starve themselves to death.  After a month, cut the vine and pull it down while it is still strong.  In 6 months or so, the roots (and any vines you don't pull down) will turn to mush.

If you don't chemically kill the roots to their tips, they will return with vengance.

If you don't use chemicals, then, cut a 2' section out of the stalk, ... if you make a just single cut, the two ends will join.  (There is 6,000 volts of atmosphereic electricity, between the ground roots and the atmosphereic tips, that's the only reason I can imagine a single cut will rejoin itself, so cut out a 2 foot section ... )

Wherever the vine was supported by the tree, that part of the tree should be considered dead.  (owner negligence)  Dead!  They are widow makers.  Absent dropping those branches, that tree is basically a dangerous tree for the owner to walk under, esp in a storm.  (A mean vine like, transplanted by a mean neighbor onto an older tree of a clueless neighbor, is a less than innocent way for a mean neighbor to threaten-diminish the property of his neighbor, and even get someone killed.

Hook the vine to a bull rope and pull her down with a winch, while the vine is still green.  Let the Prosecutor do its stuff on one vine ... give it 4 weeks to kill the roots. Don't wait too long to pull it down, because the stalk will break under the tension, leaving the upper vine on the tree.  This will leave large pieces of dead vine to fall from 80 feet up or whatever, up to a year later.

As to haul volume, don't laugh ... using a full size pickup bed as a measure, a 4" vine, say 100' long, all folded back on itself real neat, and rope (about 100 feet of 3/8 rope - 1/4 rope is not strong enough) and compressed radially, and then cut into 4-6 ft lengths between the ropes with a saw for handling, will require about 10 to 12  loads.  They are not small.  Feed them into a chipper, and die ...

Have Fun!!!

[SwampDonkey]

 ;D ;D ;D ;D