Tree killing cactus (forum)

Jethro starts with ...
This cactus has white trumpet like flowers at night but does not have any fruit like Dragon Fruit. The pine tree (>30 meters high) is in danger of smothering and becoming dangerous to house below. Have been quoted $5000 to remove tree due to difficulty imposed by cactus covering the tree. I have tried to poison, separating roots clinging to tree for 2 meters up tree but nothing seems to slow it climbing towards the top of the tree.

Does anyone know of a solution to remove/ kill cactus to save beautiful tree and prevent tree dying & posing danger to house below.

Thanks

Jethro

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Picture: 1

Time: 11th November 2011 4:12pm

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About the Author Jethro
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peter says...
hi jethro,
are you sure thats not a dragon fruit,
it looks just the same to me.

if you just cut it off at ground
level the main plant will die then just
trim off or poison any shoots that
grow from the roots,


Time: 12th November 2011 9:04am

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Helen says...
That looks like what we call a moon flower cactus. We have one growing up the tree out the front. Never heard of one actually smothering a tree and they grow all around here. Yours is growing spectacularly well though :)
Are you sure its killing your pine? It does look healthy from the picture.
I guess because its segmented and an epiphite that it would grow from any one of the segments. Maybe some sort of systemic poison would work though? What poisons have you tried?

Time: 12th November 2011 10:15am

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About the Author Helen3
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Tabs says...
Jethro, your cactus could be one of many, they are designed to climb trees and if growing well will smother your tree. You have two options: kill it by frilling, which is where several cuts are made around the whole plant at ONE LEVEL without cutting it off at the base - this means you need to leave it in the tree as the spines especially become brittle when dead or you can manually remove it yourself which is risky without the proper equipment or you can pay someone else to do it. Whatever you do, it needs to be done now as it will only get worse. If you only get the top taken off by someone else you might find it manageable. If you cut it off at the base it will take a long time to die and its fleshy stems will have enough energy to put down new roots.

Time: 15th November 2011 10:47am

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lucashobbs78 says...
did you end up getting rid of the cactus? we have several in our rain trees out the front of our yard and are very keen to get rid of them before they kill our rain trees.

Time: 15th July 2017 7:24pm

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Anthony says...
That is certainly a type of Dragonfruit and if you can get your hands on some pollen from a different variety of dragonfruit when they are flowering you could possibly end up with a lot of fruit.
Unfortunately, once they get that far up into your tree you pretty much have to cut down the tree to get rid of it! Or call a professional to come and remove all growth$$$$$$$.
It shouldn't kill your tree but when it gets too top heavy the tree could snap or break off.
Cutting it off at the ground will do little to stop its growth as it will just keep sending out new roots.
Don't plant dragonfruit next to large, established trees. They will get out of control very quickly!

Time: 24th July 2017 6:03pm

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lucashobbs78 says...
Thanks. Unfortunately the cactus was in the tree before we bought the house. We knew the risks, but are very keen to try and keep the trees. We have cut the roots at head height, and pulled all the lower roots completely away down to about a 2 meter distance away from the trees. Massive job. Our next step is to drill holes in all the large roots and poison them. We really want to keep the trees and are trying all options.

Time: 25th July 2017 1:15pm

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morgank says...
Hi--we have this issue as well. Just wondered what you ended up doing and if you were able to save the tree. Thanks!

Time: 17th August 2019 1:12am

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Lucashobbs78 says...
We ended up calling in an arborist. Was a huge job that took all week to rid our 3 raintrees of the cactus. The volume of cactus chopped out of the trees was in the order of 8 tonnes.

Time: 23rd August 2019 8:46am

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