When should an eastern cottonwood be pruned?
Cottonwood needs deadwood removal on a recurring cycle rather than a one-time cleanup, because it manufactures deadwood faster than anything else here. Never top it: it decays rapidly through large wounds, and a topped cottonwood regrows dense, weakly attached sprouts on a decaying stub, which is a materially worse hazard than what was there before.
Reading eastern cottonwood before you cut
Cottonwood is always shedding something, so "it drops branches" is not decline by itself. What is: dead branches in the upper crown with bark already slipping off, and sunken dead bark patches from Cytospora canker on limbs. The one to act on is decay at old failure points — an included-bark union or a torn scaffold from a previous storm is where the next and larger failure originates.
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