My poor pecan, strangled?

My tree rats sometimes do something nice for me. Maybe to make up for throwing apples at me, in years past. They’d steal my apples, dash across the tree covered sky into a maple tree, then throw the apple at me. Repeatedly. At me! Me, who previously thought they were sooo cute! Little bastards!

Ahem. My tree rats sometimes do something nice for me. They planted a pecan tree for me. It is now three, maybe four years old. But life happened and I wasn’t able to keep an eye on my desired plantings as in the past. My poly-culture rebelled.

The culprit. Japanese honeysuckle. It has been given a death sentence. Wasn’t it pretty?



Now my tree has a very unique decorative trunk.



So, since it is a spiral design, I am hoping the cambium will still be able to support this tree. Or is it likely to die?

Maybe next winter find a tasty cultivar and graft something new onto it, below the tightly spiraled section? What do ya'll think?

I think you removed the vine in time. The bark of the pecan will recover, it just takes a few years.
The cambium layer is probably still functioning since it was a spiral up the tree trunk, if there are live branches, the tree is alive.

Tree rat stew is very tasty by the way.

Redhawk

I agree with RedHawk, looks like you got it in time :)
I have some honeysuckle that I need to see what it's strangling too...

Here's a permie type question: can we use honeysuckle to strangle things we don't want? Doubt it would take down a locust, wonder what it's useful for besides pretty?
It's so weird, In NM I put so much work into getting honeysuckle to grow, here I execute it... and the idea I'd ever pull baby maple trees as weeds would have never occurred to me. I still flinch when I do it, feels like a crime. I was raised you DON'T kill ANY tree. They are so valuable in the desert. So weird here... :)

honey suckle will (if trained to do so) strangle by girdling any tree. The locust trees, sumacs, most of hickory family, can be problematic since they will send up root suckers when the parent tree is in danger of dying.

Thanks guys!