churchrummagesale:

No trespassing

See, the top picture is just what happens to a healthy, perfectly well-shaped tree if you don’t remove the lower branches once the crown establishes higher up – the lower branches get more and first spring growth as energy gets hydraulically pumped up from the winter root stores, so they try to stretch and outrace the shade of the crown but they just get spindly for no real gain – the thickness of a branch is basically representative of how much lifetime sun has been kicked up from leaves on the tree (!) graph it tops, look at how where it meets the trunk is noticeably thinner than the younger stuff above it, and keep in mind that sustaining the wood of all those branches in the interim not only came with some “support cost” but the opportunity cost of using that spring growth up higher