Why do people paint the bottoms of trees white?
Question:I see a lot of homes with trees in the front yard painted white half way up the trunk. Just from the ground up. Why do they do that??
Answers:
Here in Phoenix they paint the trunks of orange trees and other fruit trees white all the time. It protects the tree from insects but mostly it protects the trunk from the intense sunlight we have here by reflecting some of the heat off of it.
My own six orange trees are all painted white and all produce oranges.
are you sure its not a birch tree? they do that.
It is to repel gypsy moth caterpillars.
trees are racist
Decoration.
old school---cosmetic only---used to be white washed--people forgot how to do that so they have to buy paint now
It also helps keeping those Little new branches from growing on the bottom. Sometimes they'll sneak up on you . I usually just pull em of though.
old folks used to do it because insects/ants/ etc. prefer not to expose themselves (on the white expanse of tree trunk) to predatory birds or other insects that will eat them.
Because insects avoid exposing themselves the old folks think it keeps the insects out of their trees. And maybe it does.
its a pesticide paint that stops certain types of nasty insects that crawl high up a tree and are a real B*&^% to get rid of once they are established up in the tree.
It is an old method to keep the trunk's bark from cracking open due to strong sunlight during the winter. Another method is to wrap the trunk in paper.
http://www.ext.vt.edu/departments/enviro...
Those who said it was to repel insects were right though some do it merely for decoration.
I paint my trees with a 50/50 white flat latex with water to prevent sun scald. That is a long used nursery practice to keep the trunk from getting cracks and then getting bacterial and fungal attacks. I hope it stops woodpeckers from pecking on my trees too. Especially the fruit trees!
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