Question
I have these beutiful queen palms in my back yard.  I had a guy trim the trees.  
In the past they all have used ladders.  When I came out I saw spike holes
everywhere.  He tried to tell me they would fill in. I read that the tree can get
infected with insects etc so I put a little bit of gray silicone to keep the bugs
out.  I figured it cures pretty fast so I don't think it would infect the tree
much.  My questions are:

A:  Will these holes ever fill in?
B:  Is there any kind of filler I could use.  I may just get a large tiki mask and
put it on the tree.  Still a bummer though.

Answer
Hi Billy, first of all, your tree trimmer should not have a license to trim palms; the worst thing you can do to a palm is damage the tissue on the trunk. Palms do not have bark like a tree, it is tissue that bleeds from holes (you should notice reddish brown stains around the holes he made) and the palm is without doubt hurt from it; that said, it will recover, but the holes will remain, albeit calloused over, they will remain and this is the reason a palm trimmer that is worth his salt will use a ladder and not spike his way up the trunk! Don't use anything to fill the holes, this will only exacerbate the situation and trap insects or problems inside. Let it be and it will fix itself, but let the trimmer know that he is way off base on his assumptions. Nick