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[anax]

Pruning is an important part of plant maintenance. You'd think that a plant, being an organism that theoretically is capable of living in the wild, would be capable of growing in such a way as to not sabotage itself. You'd think this, but you'd be wrong, and any walk through a healthy forest will tell you why

Comments

[icelightning]

Huh! All of this actually makes a lot of sense.

I understand why branches break off at those splits, too, because of the wind. It's the same reason why a WWII plane kept on having its wings sheer off when pilots tried to pull out of a dive. Simply put, there isn't enough support/resistance at those locations to deal with the large amount of forces that the wind puts on that particular location. The way they fixed the airplane was not by adding more material (which made the effect worse), but by adding more supporting structure inside the wing. That's why you see some branches supported by rope/string--that adds additional support to the branch by the tension from said string/rope.

Wow, you can see my Aerospace Engineering major right there, can't you? Eheh.

[anax]

Yep, that's exactly right. :D