A Tree Has How Many Lives? Not 9 I Would Guess.

Sep 24, 2007 6 Replies
W

An irrigation line break caused a dawn redwood (9' tall) and a crabapple (9') tall to lose their foliage in the heat of August (90F+) period. Intense watering for two weeks brought almost all the foliage back on the crabapple, and did a fairly good job on the dawn (meta sequoia). The dawn usually has some trouble each August (we live 60 miles outside of Sacramento and August has lots of 90F+ days). I generally spray it lightly for days during such a tough stretch, and each year it comes back fine.



I was talking to a gardener about this and she offered that trees have something like 1 main leaf and an auxiliary leaf, if the main dies the aux takes over. Sometimes they have a few extra auxs. Does this translate into a tree having two, maybe three lives if hit by a lack of water?


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S

Your gardener obviously knows nothing about dawn redwood's growing habits. Dawn redwood doesn't do well in dry soils. Actually it does very well in areas that are too wet for most other trees. I have two dawn redwood growing in a wildflower meadow that is always boggy and they have doubled in size in the four years since I planted them... one is now about 8', the other around 20'.

Crabapple prefers well drained soil, its prefered habitat is just opposite of dawn redwood... I would not plant those two together... you'd need to choose which one can live, and they definitely do not compliment each other an aesthetically.

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D

No, there is no translation from trunk failure and branching rebound, AND, drought conditions.

What the multi-tiered thing is when the trunk is damaged to the point it can't produce any growing, a primary branch takes over, and so forth. A pecan tree here is on the 2nd branch attempt. Culprit is a dog with anxiety problems initially, and 2 dogs later. Dave

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S

Being 300' feet apart doesn't mean anything... they could be miles apart, and if they are both in the same environment then distance means zip. Three hundred feet is not much. My two dawn redwoods are more than 600' apart, but are both in similarly boggy ground.

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D

But, has nothing to do with drought conditions... Results from physical injury caused external to the tree.

If you think you already have the answer, why the opposing replies? Dave

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