Ivy is not withering after snipping

[Lucky Luke]

Hello:
About six months ago, a neighbour, who is infirm, was asking me how to get rid of ivy that is growing up the trunk of a tree in her garden (the tree must be over thirty feet high, altogether). She was afraid that eventually, the ivy will strangle this tree. I offered to snip it at the base of the tree, and did so, being confident that, within a couple of. weeks or so, it would wither and die. I carefully went all round the base of the tree, snipping through several separate growths of ivy that were climbing up the tree, and even pulled it off, so that there was a clear disconnection from any nutrition that the ground supplied.

After all this time, the ivy does not seem to be any different — it looks as green as it did when I did the cutting!

My question is: does the failure of the ivy to wither show that, in some way, the 'suckers" that allow it to grip the tree-bark allow it to receive nourishment, or is ivy very, very slow to die, even when its tendrils have been cut at base?
Thanks in advance, for any useful comments!
Regards,
A.W.

 

[Burnerman]

Curious, I did exactly the same with a neighbours tree but I stripped away two feet or so of the ivy so no tendrils remained.
3 weeks later everything was browning nicely.
John

 

[conny]

When we first moved to this house 5 years ago the front and back walls where the other house is joined, (it's a semi detached), had Ivy growing up as high as the first floor windows. In the front I cut it near the base and stripped/scraped it all off but it left a tramline pattern on the brickwork which is very difficult to get rid of. On the back wall I cut the bottom 3' away and left the rest to die off over winter. The bulk of it died off but some stems didn't fully die and the following spring it was growing back as quickly as ever.
I think the best thing you can do to 'satisfy' the elderly lady is to cut all visible Ivy away as much as possible, getting up into the lower branches if possible. Tell her you have cut out as much as you can and hopefully the rest will die off over time, but warn her the higher parts may still be able to grow as it may be rooted to the tree but won't 'strangle' the tree which is much bigger. They simply use the tree as an aid to reach the sunlight.

 

[JohnD]

With ivy and bay, I use some little jars of Glyphosate concentrate (undiluted) and as I work along, dip each cut end for a few minutes. Or you can apply with a brush. Pretty effective at killing the plant.

If I get any regrowth I cut the green stem and dip it again.

Though I have not had the problem you describe.

 

[Mottie]

Funnily enough I saw a tree the other day that had dead ivy all the way up the tree. There was a clear foot or more that had been removed all the way around near to the base. Some of the ivy stalks were over an inch thick so it must have been quite old.

 

[StephenOak]

I have a reasonable amount of experience of this, when we moved in our garden was something of a jungle with plenty of ivy growing up trees.

I would take this seriously, an oak tree lost a (12'? 15'?) branch that was c. 8" thick, but bulked up to c. 2' thick with ivy. *

On a number of trees I have done like you and cut a gap in the stems running up the tree, in some cases needing a saw as the ivy stems were =>2" thick.

AFAIUI that should be enough as this is the only source of water to the ivy. To make sure the supply of water is stopped I made sure the gap was a few inches. I doubt that the two parts could reconnect but I wanted to make it as hard as possible.

The other thing I have done is to loosen the soil all around the base of the tree, at least a trowel's width out from the trunk to look for ivy stems & make sure that I had cut all of them.

Doing that has always worked for me, after a couple of months the ivy higher up has died and I have been able to pull (most of) it off.

* That produced a lot of woody ivy. I filled something like 7 or 8 large garden sacks, like this, 4 or 5 with shredded wood that a friend used as mulch and 2 or 3 with pieces thicker than my wrist that my MiL used as firewood.

 

[Nige F]

It's right about not strangling the tree but because it's evergreen it adds a lot of weight and wind resistance to a tree.

 

[Lucky Luke]

Curious, I did exactly the same with a neighbours tree but I stripped away two feet or so of the ivy so no tendrils remained.
3 weeks later everything was browning nicely.
John

Thank you, Burnerman, for your observations. However, there is no change in the ivy on the tree I tried to treat — it still seems to be flourishing! THANKS, ALSO, TO ALL YOU OTHERS THAT HAVE REPLIED TO MY QUERY. I expected to be advised of replies to my query automatically (emails have always arrived in the past when a reply has been posted, as that is how my preferences are set). When none came (there has not even been one), I assumed that no replies had been posted. This is the first time, for weeks, that this forum has crossed my mind since my first posting. It was not bad manners on my part. Thanks again.
A.W.