Tree Lopping

One of the reasons that there is so much confusion around the concept of tree lopping is that the term is poorly defined. Some will define it as the indiscriminate cutting of branches. Others will claim that lopping is another word for ‘topping’ – the removal of large sections from the canopy of a tree. To step back from the industry debate and look purely at the term, lopping is the act of cutting off a section from the whole. Therefore tree lopping is the removal of any section, be it branch or canopy, from the tree. Defined as such we can see that much of the work of a tree surgeon involves lopping to some degree. When a tree is pruned, parts of the tree are trimmed and cut off. When a tree is removed, parts of the tree first need to be cut off so that it can be safely felled. As such, lopping is an essential element of most arborist services. So now that we can understand the concept of lopping and see its application within other services, we will now distinguish it from those services by observing the differences.