Collected Spindle sprouting from the base only. Remove low shoots or not?

[peterbone]

This Spindle was collected over winter and chopped. It's roots are not bad. It has sprouted from the base but not the upper part of the trunk. A scratch test shows that the trunk is still alive but there's no sign of buds. Do I leave the lower growth and hope that it buds out higher up at some point or do I remove the lower growth to try to encourage buds on the trunk? I'm worried that all the energy will go into those low shoots and the trunk will die back. It's currently sweating in a clear bag.

 

[Tieball]

This Spindle was collected over winter and chopped. It's roots are not bad. It has sprouted from the base but not the upper part of the trunk. A scratch test shows that the trunk is still alive but there's no sign of buds. Do I leave the lower growth and hope that it buds out higher up at some point or do I remove the lower growth to try to encourage buds on the trunk? I'm worried that all the energy will go into those low shoots and the trunk will die back. It's currently sweating in a clear bag.

The scratch test.....Did you find a moist, slippery green below the upper bark? Or. Did you find a green dry chalk like color, not moist, below the upper bark?

The dry chalk green is not a good sign on my trees and usually means no sap is moving to that area. The slippery green tells me that sap is flowing to the area....and activity could soon begin. I usually get out my magnifying glass and search the trunk for small bump buds in the making. Is your new growth all and only on one side of the trunk? ...the right side on your photo?

 

[peterbone]

The scratch test.....Did you find a moist, slippery green below the upper bark? Or. Did you find a green dry chalk like color, not moist, below the upper bark?

The dry chalk green is not a good sign on my trees and usually means no sap is moving to that area. The slippery green tells me that sap is flowing to the area....and activity could soon begin. I usually get out my magnifying glass and search the trunk for small bump buds in the making. Is your new growth all and only on one side of the trunk? ...the right side on your photo?

Thanks. It's more of a spongy green. Not sure if it was slippery. I didn't want to damage the bark too much but I could try again later. The lower shoots are coming from 2 sub trunks that were cut right back after collection, one on each side of the tree. There's no sign of buds on the main trunk after a careful look. Another spindle collected a bit later has spouted nicely.

 

[Tieball]

Thanks. It's more of a spongy green. Not sure if it was slippery. I didn't want to damage the bark too much but I could try again later. The lower shoots are coming from 2 sub trunks that were cut right back after collection, one on each side of the tree. There's no sign of buds on the main trunk after a careful look. Another spindle collected a bit later has spouted nicely.

Spongy wet green is good. I wouldn’t scratch again if it’s damaging areas, however, at some point in time your curiosity is going to surface. And you’ll scratch somewhere. The tree might just be taking it’s time to begin work up higher...after being collected, root chopped and top chopped. With my trees it’s usually a wait-and-see time. There’s nothing I can do on my trees but be patient and enjoy the watching and waiting. The tree will decide what it wants to do.

 

[Tieball]

You could possibly find that one of those new shoots from below is your next leader and the left side trunk is going nowhere.

 

[Bonsai Nut]

It all depends on what your goal is.

If this is a rare tree and you want to keep it alive at all costs, keep the suckers.

If you really only collected it for the trunk, and you will only want the tree if it pops buds on the trunk, remove the suckers. You will either kill a bad tree, or gain a good tree

 

[peterbone]

It all depends on what your goal is.

If this is a rare tree and you want to keep it alive at all costs, keep the suckers.

If you really only collected it for the trunk, and you will only want the tree if it pops buds on the trunk, remove the suckers. You will either kill a bad tree, or gain a good tree

Yes, the 2nd option. The tree is useless without the trunk. The suckers are from soil level. So you think that it has more chances of budding on the trunk by removing the low shoots? What's your logic?

 

[Bonsai Nut]

Yes, the 2nd option. The tree is useless without the trunk. The suckers are from soil level. So you think that it has more chances of budding on the trunk by removing the low shoots? What's your logic?

I wrote an article on air-layering and hormone flow in plants a while back. Foliage - mainly terminal buds - produce auxin (a growth hormone), which stimulates a tree to make roots. Roots produce cytokinin (a different growth hormone) which signals a tree to produce buds. Assuming you start with a tree that has lots of foliage and healthy roots, if you prune it dramatically and remove all the buds, you upset the balance of auxin to cytokinin, and the tree starts to develop buds and push new foliage. If you girdle the tree and interrupt the flow of auxin to the lower part of the tree, the upper part of the tree will try to grow roots at the girdle (air-layer). This is also what happens when you take a cutting and stick it in the soil with no roots - the presence of auxin and absence of cytokinin signals the cutting to produce roots.

Therefore if you want the tree to push buds on the trunk, it is best that you remove all of the suckers so that the tree isn't receiving any auxin from foliage. It is a race against time for the tree to produce buds on the trunk before it uses up its store of sugars in the trunk and the roots, but the suckers aren't helping the process - they are actually slowing it down because the tree is starting to get auxin from foliage. Of course, the suckers are also starting to provide sugars which will keep the tree alive... but they aren't helping you get to your goal.

 

[0soyoung]

you girdle the tree and interrupt the flow of cytokinin from the roots, the upper part of the tree will try to grow roots at the girdle (air-layer).

oops!
Cytokinins are in the xylem (wood) sap. Auxin is in the phloem sap that is going away from the leaves, but the biologically active stuff is the the cambium bucket brigade that goes only in the direction of the roots.

 

[0soyoung]

I have a few spindles that I am playing with. With one, I accidentally knocked off the sprout just below where I had chopped it and got a similar profusion of suckers and only the profusion of suckers, just like yours @peterbone . Everything, the trunk, above died and never re-sprouted.

For me, it is difficult to see the nodes once the stem has barked up, so I don't really know if there were any nodes between where the sprouts were that I knocked off and the base where the suckers appeared. It appears that you may have a branch stub on the outside of the curve/elbow of your stem/trunk, which would be a node location. It should sprout there, if it is ever going to sprout above the suckers.

I've generally made it my habit to always keep a visible bud when I cut back any tree. I suspect this may be a 'must do' with spindle trees. Certainly I've not run into any similar problems with my others where I have and have not had a similar accident.

 

[Bonsai Nut]

the biologically active stuff is the the cambium bucket brigade that goes only in the direction of the roots.

Incorrect. Auxin is auxin, whether transported quickly in the phloem, or transported slowly in polar auxin transport... or for that matter whether introduced via an artificial external source (like rooting hormone products). There is no such thing as "biologically active" auxin.

Additionally, polar auxin transport might be one-way on the cellular level, but it is not exclusively one-way within a plant. PAT transports auxin downwards towards the root tip through the center of shoots and roots, and then upwards towards the apex in the cortical cells, in addition to short distance lateral transport pretty much throughout the plant. Add in the fact that PAT auxin flows and phloem auxin flows are not mutually exclusive and you will quickly reach the conclusion that:

"due to the higher capacity and velocity of phloem-based transport, the majority of long-distance auxin redistribution occurs in the phloem, which is especially significant in larger plant species."

Regardless, I can't see how it makes a difference when applied to air-layering a tree - where you interrupt the primary flow of auxin (in the phloem) while leaving the primary flow of cytokinin (in the xylem) intact. If you are also interrupting slower PAT auxin flow, so much the better!

 

[0soyoung]

If you girdle the tree and interrupt the flow of cytokinin from the roots,

Maybe you would like to fix this nonsense.

 

[Bonsai Nut]

Maybe you would like to fix this nonsense.

Hmmm... yeah. The exact opposite of what I intended to post Not a good idea to sever the xylem

 

[peterbone]

How about if I remove the growing tips of the suckers only? This should change the auxin levels as required while still keeping some leaves for photosynthesis.

Attached is the other Spindle I mentioned, which was also cut back to a stump with no buds. That was taken a couple of weeks ago and those shoots have now grown a lot more. No budding on the left hand sub trunk though.