Hurricane Prep Pruning in Orlando, FL

Hurricane prep pruning is a focused round of work on the trees around your home that are most likely to cause damage in a tropical storm, done in the months before the season opens on June 1. It is not a general trim of everything in the yard. We start with a walk-around that sorts trees by risk, then prune or remove only what makes a real difference. In Orlando, that usually means laurel and water oaks over the house, pines that took a beating in past storms, and palms carrying dead fronds and heavy seed clusters.

Start with the species

UF/IFAS researchers who studied urban trees through ten hurricanes found clear differences between species. Live oak, sand live oak, southern magnolia, bald cypress and cabbage palm sit in the highest wind-resistance group; laurel oak, water oak and sand pine sit in the lowest for the Southeastern Coastal Plain, and slash pine, longleaf pine, red maple and camphor fall in the medium-low group. They also found that no species is completely windproof and that larger trees lost a greater share of their branches. So the questions are which trees on your lot are in the weaker groups, how big they are, and what they would hit.

What prep work actually involves

• Removing dead and broken limbs, which are the first pieces to fly
• Reducing the length and end weight of long limbs over the roof, pool cage and driveway
• Correcting weak forks on younger oaks before they grow into splits
• Checking the base of older laurel oaks for fungus, cavities and hollow sound
• Looking at pines for browning tops, bark damage and leaning after earlier storms
• Trimming dead fronds and seed stalks from palms, without stripping green fronds
• Flagging trees under or near power lines for the utility

What not to do

Thinning out the inside of a tree so wind can pass through, known as lion-tailing, moves weight to the ends of branches and can make breakage more likely. Hurricane cuts on palms are another common mistake: UF/IFAS found those palms were more likely to lose their crowns. And heavy cutting the week a storm is forecast creates its own hazard. The City of Orlando asks residents to refrain from major yard work before a named storm, because crews may not collect the debris before the wind arrives.

Spacing and rooting room

UF/IFAS also found that trees growing in groups of five or more survived hurricanes better than lone trees, and that trees with more rooting space did better than those squeezed into small soil areas. Those findings matter when you decide whether to keep a tree, replace it, or plant something new. If a laurel oak has to come out, a live oak or cabbage palm planted with plenty of room is a sturdier replacement.