Tree and Palm Pruning in Mallorca

Red palm weevil has been on Mallorca for years and it kills Phoenix canariensis quickly and quietly. Pruning is part of how it spreads, because fresh cuts release scent that attracts the adult, so timing and treatment matter as much as the shape of the crown.

Olives are the opposite problem. They are cut too hard far more often than too little, usually in an attempt to make an old tree look like a nursery specimen. A tree that has been shaped that way takes several seasons to recover its balance.

Pines near a house bring a third question, which is what falls and where. Crown thinning on a large Aleppo pine is rope work, and the price reflects access and disposal at least as much as the cutting itself.

Phoenix palms are pruned once a year at most, and the window matters more than the technique. The red palm weevil flies when it is warm, so the cut is planned for the cold months, when the adult is not on the wing, and each cut is treated before the crew leaves. A palm pruned in high summer with untreated cuts is an open invitation, whatever it looks like afterwards.

The cut itself is conservative. Only dead and dying fronds below the horizontal come off, along with fruit stalks and the old fibre at the base of the crown; a crown stripped back to a tuft of upright fronds has lost most of the leaf area it needs and takes years to recover. Washingtonia and date palms follow the same logic with different timing, and a company that works with palms will say which applies to yours.

Height changes the price more than the species does. A palm you can reach from a ladder is one job; above that it is a climb with a harness or a platform, and the quote has to include the access and the removal of what comes down. Ask how the crown will be reached before asking what it costs.

Two pests account for most of the treatment requests on the island. The pine processionary moth builds its white silk nests in Aleppo pines through the winter, and the caterpillars that come down in late winter are a hazard to dogs, children and anyone who handles them. The red palm weevil works unseen inside the crown of a Phoenix palm until the fronds collapse, by which time the tree is usually lost.

Both are treated by the same kind of company, and increasingly by the same method. Endotherapy injects the product into the trunk, where the tree carries it to the crown itself; nothing is sprayed, so it can be done beside a pool, a terrace or a kitchen window. For the processionary it is applied in autumn before the nests form; for the weevil it is a preventive programme repeated through the year. Taking nests out of a tall pine by hand is rope work, and the quote should say so.

This is specialist work with its own paperwork for the products used, and it is normally quoted separately from pruning even when the same company does both. Describe the trees, their height and what you have seen, and the request goes to companies that carry the treatment as well as the saw. The page on red palm weevil treatment covers the treatment itself, and the article on the weevil explains what an infestation looks like before it is obvious.