Redwood family progression

LittleDingus

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My coastal redwoods have put on some new growth on their branches...but haven't really extended up at all yet.

The burl on the candelabra is doing what burls do though :D

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Again...a week or three of sunshine and sub 100F temps and hopefully these guys will take off!
 

LittleDingus

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And even my dawn redwoods are mostly living off their initial leaf flush still :( I'm really not used to them being so sparse by this time of the year.

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But I do have one that has filled in reasonably.

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It's weird the way a lot of my trees are growing this year.

Anyway, it's this one somewhat vigorous guy that I worked on a bit today. Mostly I poked around the nebari without digging the whole tree up. I found places with small roots in bad places like these

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and removed them

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I was really hoping to put this guy into a pot after the heat...maybe mid August...but now I'm thinking about leaving it in the bag for another year.
 

bendem

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And even my dawn redwoods are mostly living off their initial leaf flush still :( I'm really not used to them being so sparse by this time of the year.

View attachment 383237

But I do have one that has filled in reasonably.

View attachment 383240

It's weird the way a lot of my trees are growing this year.

Anyway, it's this one somewhat vigorous guy that I worked on a bit today. Mostly I poked around the nebari without digging the whole tree up. I found places with small roots in bad places like these

View attachment 383239 View attachment 383241

and removed them

View attachment 383238 View attachment 383242

I was really hoping to put this guy into a pot after the heat...maybe mid August...but now I'm thinking about leaving it in the bag for another year.
Hope your redwoods are feeling better soon! This weekend I took some inspiration from you and moved my rapidly growing dawn redwood out of its two gallon pot and slipped it gently into a five gallon grow bag.
 

LittleDingus

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Hope your redwoods are feeling better soon! This weekend I took some inspiration from you and moved my rapidly growing dawn redwood out of its two gallon pot and slipped it gently into a five gallon grow bag.

Sigh...they'll be fine.

We had a cold spring. Then it jumped to upper 90Fs for a week. Then it's been mostly overcast/rainy ever since. Most of my trees are pretty much in shock. My oaks are about the only things growing "normally" this season so far. Even my maples aren't pushing much new growth.

If we can avoid jumping back up to the high 90Fs in July (yeah right!) There's still time to thicken up. Otherwise, it might just be a poor growth year fthis year :(

Hopefully yours is doing better than mine :) I'm used to a few feet in height per year from my dawn redwoods!
 

KingAldamir

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I'm old school...I rarely watch youtube or internet videos. Faster to read. There are some tings better in video, but I can navigate information so much faster when it's in print.

Do you do anything for humidity? The first winter the coastals were indoors under lights and did fine. The second winter they were too large for me to keep all of them indoors. I did keep on indoors though. The next season, the first trunk hardly grew at all...the tree started a second trunk instead. I think what happened is the growth buds dried out. Since redwoods are an extension species...the tree opted to start a new trunk rather than for new buds on the old trunk. I'm curious what will happen this season as there was some minor new growth on the old trunk...which is now half the size of the new trunk. I'm wondering if they will both grow now.

I have an albo-spica that I don't think I've talked much about on this thread yet. I picked up that one because its growth tips start off white then green up over time. It reminds me of the albino redwoods which are super cool! I hunted down the "christmas tree" albino when my wife took me to see the redwoods.

View attachment 357569 View attachment 357570

We ended up seeing 2-3 other albinos while we were there as well. The albo-spica is the only one I've thought about trying to root a cutting from. Otherwise, my existing trees are so small that any cutting I take doesn't give much of an advantage over starting from seed. The albo-spica is a cultivar though...not much choice BUT to clone from cuttings for that one.

...and yeah I hear you on the group plantings to save space! The past few years have been ballooning up my collection to get some fun stuff to play with. This is supposed to be my reduction year since we're hoping to move next year. We'll see how that goes...
Thanks for sharing, I just got my hands on an edition of "The White Redwoods: Ghosts of the Forest".

It made for a very interesting read about the double stomata amount on the albino's and propagation experiments. Here's a link if you're interested:

 

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LittleDingus

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Thanks for sharing, I just got my hands on an edition of "The White Redwoods: Ghosts of the Forest".

It made for a very interesting read about the double stomata amount on the albino's and propagation experiments. Here's a link if you're interested:


I am interested...thanks!

I've spoken a bit with Tom Stapleton from Chimera Redwoods about my dawn redwood that has developed an albino streaked branch. The working theory is that I had them planted in a hallowed out cypress knee that I had painted the potting chamber with a "liquid rubber" spray paint. I haven't looked up the MSDS for the paint yet, but you can bet there are a number of petrolium based solvents in there! That likely means a significant concentration of heavy metals as well. Tom's research points towards heavy metal concentrations causing albinism.

The thinking is the trees had been growing in heavy metal contaminated environment for a couple of years. On top of that, they experienced drought conditions which would have pushed the heavy metal concentrations higher at the same time the tree was under stresses for other reasons. This may have led to the mutation.

Either I was exceedingly lucky and truly did encounter a very rare anomaly...or...there is some prevailing set of circumstances that made a rare event occur in a short time frame. Statistically, the later is more likely. If that's true...it should be reproducible ;)

I'm starting to get a new wave of growth on the tree with the mutation. Now that it's showing growth, I went ahead and chopped the trunk above the branch I want to keep. That branch isn't extending any more, but a couple of fronds on it are. If I can get them to bulk up, maybe the tree won't ditch the branch this winter.

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It's interesting to see that the normal, all green fronds continue to grow normally while the fully albino fronds wither up. The leaflets that are a mix continue to look healthy as well...mostly.

There are a number of leaflets along the short section of branch that are striped. Each one has the potential to form a new branch bud. If I can keep this section of branch alive, maybe I get lucky again in the future??
 

LittleDingus

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It might be getting a little late in the season now, but I went ahead and pruned one of my coastal redwoods. It's getting too many trunks off the base that need to be cleaned up. Some of the branches are getting pretty leggy too. The leader burned up while I was out of town and it didn't get sufficient water so that needed some clean up as well. My hope is our growing season is still long enough (should be another month or so for these guys) that it can still get itself ready for next season's flush.

It started out like this:

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And ended up like this:

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This is a "throw away" tree for me. I have 2 others that are much nicer than this one that I focus more attention on. As a result, I don't really have any plan in mind for it. It was just getting too shaggy and I was getting tired of it tipping over in the wind all the time :(
 

LittleDingus

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No work on this one...just wanted to dig it out and get a better look at it since it's been a while now.

It's been a disappointing season for my redwoods :( All of them :( They aren't dying or anything...but they haven't really grown this season. They didn't flush at all before the summer heat. They've all got new growth now that looks nice and healthy, but they're growing inches where last season they grew feet.

There's been basically no growth in girth this season yet.

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But the burl still looks nice and healthy.

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It's been covered to try and keep the new sprouts down...which seems to be working as I only had to rub off 2 small sprouts. But that could also just be the general lack of vigor of these trees this season.

It'll be alright. It was just repotted back in February and I had trimmed back the branches as well. That and the cool spring might explain the slow season.

It's a pretty well shaped tree, though :D

20210821_182930.jpg
 

LittleDingus

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Of all my larger redwoods, this coastal seems to be the most vigorous this year. It was also repotted back in January, but the roots were minimally disturbed compared to my other ones.

The burl is continuing to do what burls do:

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There were 6-8 new sprouts popping out of the burl in the region all the trunks sprouted from. I cut/rubbed them all off.

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There's a sixth trunk hidden back there somewhere...well, a fat branch coming off the fattest trunk.

I was really hoping to get this one into a pot this winter and start cleaning up some of the top. I'm happy with the trunk sizes. They'll continue to plump up, but if they plump up too much I think it will start to look too crowded in there. I'm already concerned that I won't be able to pull the foliage back enough to create some distinction between the different trunks.

Previously, I had cut off all the foliage down low to expose the lower portion of the trunks, but this tree is very modest and wants to keep its trunks covered up :(

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This tree may never be anything worth looking at...but it is one of my more entertaining trees to watch grow :D
 

LittleDingus

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We moved over the winter and I've missed a few updates on these.

I think I may have killed all my larger sequoia during the chaos off the move :( They got left out in the freeze for too long then weather here moved quickly into lots of cold rain. I eventually caught the situation...but too late, me thinks :( The foliage has all mostly crisped up and browned...sigh...my own damn fault. It's warming here now so I'll see if they try to wake back up...but I think they are goners.

So this family is down a member.

The coastal and dawn members of the family still look healthy and are starting to wake up. I'll try and get a group photo including the maybe dead tree soonish.

This "honorary" member of the family has been suffering some undo stress due to the move as well. I was rushing to get it resecured in its new pot before the storms that are due to roam through this weekend so I forgot to take a before picture. But here it is after a haircut I would have preferred to avoid just yet.

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This guy moved into that pot before the move. The plan was to leave it shag out until it filled the pot with roots...then trim it back. The weather here had other plans.

I started leaving it outside full time about a month ago. I've found these guys will take a light freeze and some snow as long as the roots don't remain frozen too long. So it's been enjoying the outside and has even started budding out.

The problem is this property is considerably more windy than our last home. We're out in farm land with few wind blocks and springs in Illinois are windy anyway. All the foliage I had left to power root growth was acting like a wind sail. The pot is stable enough not to tip, but most likely because the tree hadn't filled it with roots yet. The wind eventually worked my ties loose and knocked enough soil out of the pot that I was having trouble keeping the root ball hydrated enough.

So I repotted it again. This time with thicker wire. And I trimmed off about half the foliage to try and allow the wind through a little easier.

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I love this tree and am really looking forward to it rooting in this pot well enough that I can start fixing some of the issues I have with the top. Once I get the trunks in line with where I want them...then I can start with foliage pads.

I really like how the reiteration has formed on this one though.

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It'll never be this tree

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but it's a start ;)

The pot was commissioned from @ForestInnPottery for the coastal redwood that is part of this family but was broken in shipping. Not the potters fault...I've gotten a number of her pots and they are packed very well! I epoxied it back together as best I could but there was a chip or two I never found.
 

LittleDingus

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Just dumping some thoughts here to avoid derailing another's thread with unrelated to their thread information...

This is a severe distillation of my experience with redwoods in Chicago thus far:

Dawns are no problem. They can winter outside here. I've had them for a number of years near Chicago before we moved to Kansas City.

We moved back to Chicago last spring and the verdict is still out on the coastals and sequoia. In KC I could mostly winter sequoia outside and only brought them into the garage during prolonged freezes. My coastals wintered in my garage under some weak lighting where they were too chilled to grow.

Winter is both longer and harsher here.

My sequoia died last spring because I just had too much else to do with the move and forgot about them. I haven't restarted any to replace them yet...that'll happen this spring. So not much info on them.

I have 5 coastal redwoods in the basement under lights right now.

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One is a cultivar and is smallish (not pictured). The other 4 are 4-5' tall. They flowered for me this year :) Well, conifers so not flowers...but pollen and cones!

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They are growing sporadically now because the basement is warmer than the garage I used to keep them in...but it freezes in this garage so too cold for long term storage :(

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...but the outer/lower branches are also starting to show dessication damage :(

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In KC, I was able to keep the coastals lush pretty much from soil to tip. But the lower leaves are dying off here. It might be too little down there. It might be humidity. Were I a gambling man, I'd bet on too little light down there and the tree is giving up on those "useless" branches :(

I've got another 2 months before I can safely start doing the 2-step with them. I doubt they are going to die on me...but they might need a few months warmer months to recover from the winter treatment! I'll have to try and readjust next year...it would be great if I could keep them about 20F cooler than where they are in my basement now!
 

BrightsideB

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Just dumping some thoughts here to avoid derailing another's thread with unrelated to their thread information...

This is a severe distillation of my experience with redwoods in Chicago thus far:

Dawns are no problem. They can winter outside here. I've had them for a number of years near Chicago before we moved to Kansas City.

We moved back to Chicago last spring and the verdict is still out on the coastals and sequoia. In KC I could mostly winter sequoia outside and only brought them into the garage during prolonged freezes. My coastals wintered in my garage under some weak lighting where they were too chilled to grow.

Winter is both longer and harsher here.

My sequoia died last spring because I just had too much else to do with the move and forgot about them. I haven't restarted any to replace them yet...that'll happen this spring. So not much info on them.

I have 5 coastal redwoods in the basement under lights right now.

View attachment 469169 View attachment 469170

One is a cultivar and is smallish (not pictured). The other 4 are 4-5' tall. They flowered for me this year :) Well, conifers so not flowers...but pollen and cones!

View attachment 469171 View attachment 469172

They are growing sporadically now because the basement is warmer than the garage I used to keep them in...but it freezes in this garage so too cold for long term storage :(

View attachment 469174

...but the outer/lower branches are also starting to show dessication damage :(

View attachment 469173

In KC, I was able to keep the coastals lush pretty much from soil to tip. But the lower leaves are dying off here. It might be too little down there. It might be humidity. Were I a gambling man, I'd bet on too little light down there and the tree is giving up on those "useless" branches :(

I've got another 2 months before I can safely start doing the 2-step with them. I doubt they are going to die on me...but they might need a few months warmer months to recover from the winter treatment! I'll have to try and readjust next year...it would be great if I could keep them about 20F cooler than where they are in my basement now!
Nice! Are these the ones you were talking to me about?
 

LittleDingus

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Nice! Are these the ones you were talking to me about?

Lol...depends on when I was talking :)

I had commissioned @ForestInnPottery to make me pots for one larger of each species. She did a remarkable job with them and I finally get to start using them this year minus the one for the sequoia as I killed all them in the move :(

The candelabra two posts up is in one of her pots that the shipper broke but she was nice enough to let me keep as she made a replacement. I was able to mostly epoxy it back together and I think it will fit that tree well as I start to clean it up.

What we've been PMing about I would probably start from seed and grow them in place since thickness wouldn't be that important.
 

LittleDingus

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Today was the day!

Time to fit this into that:

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"This" being my coastal redwood with a burl:

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I should have done this about a month ago :( They've usually woken up around February back in Kansas City so I was expecting maybe a month later here. But I have them in the basement and not in the garage. It's warm enough in the basement under the lights all of my coastals have woken up.

I don't have the lights lighting the sides like I used to. The lights were directly overhead this winter. And it shows...all the growth is at the top:

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with the lower growth dying off. This supports previous observations of all 3 redwood species: yes, they are apical dominant, but, they don't drop lower branches because of top growth...they drop branches that aren't contributers! In the full profile picture above, you can see that the top is wild and the bottom is dying off. The bottom is also shaded heavily where that tree is. My belief is that since the lower branches are too shaded to generate much energy...and the top branches are getting lots of light...the tree is dropping the lower branches that aren't providing much benefit in favor of sifting resources to grow quickly where branches are able to provide energy.

The roots took a while to comb out. Not root bound yet...but the bag was full.

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I placed the tree in the pot roughly where I wanted it and trimmed off all the overhanging roots.

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I also needed to nibble off about an inch off the bottom to get the tree to sit low enough in the pot.

I haven't decided on a final height yet. I know I want to exaggerate the height. If I follow the 2x the width of the pot rule, the tree will end up about 30 inches or a hair more. If I follow the 12:1 height to thickness rule (12 instead of 10 to exaggerate the height), that puts final height at ~24 inches. The tree is currently just over 50 inches tall.

For now, I just left it the current height.

I thought about stripping all the branches and starting to regrow new ones, but I opted not to go that route yet either. I now live in a zone where I lose a couple of growing months compared to where I've been growing these previously. I think I'm going to go a little on the conservative side until I get a reliable management process for these guys into place. So, instead, I trimmed the existing branches back ~50% but made sure to keep a lot of green. I probably need to do the 2-step for this one for the next month. We're starting to get days higher than 40F but we still get into the 20F range most nights.

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I'll keep a close eye on it now. Once it establishes itself well into this pot I will start to get serious about cutting it back.
 

LittleDingus

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It's a cold, rainy and windy day today so I decided to do something about some of my deer pruned grow out stock.

Sorry, my hands were too cold and wet for any before picture...but I can assure you that the deer are not very good at pruning :( On the plus side, they managed to miss the dawn redwood I plan to put in a bigger pot this year. On the minus side, they chewed down all the lower branches on this one that I've now repotted :(

For reference, here is a recent picture of this trees sister tree that was identical in size and development...but has not been deer pruned! These trees are 4 years from seed.

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I have this lip glazed rectangle of @sorce's that I bought specifically for a bald cypress.

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The pot is neither glazed nor unglaze so my thought was a deciduous conifer would fit it nicely ;) That tree didn't work out for a couple of reasons...so the pot has been sitting empty for 4 years now waiting for one of my dawn redwoods to grow into it. I was going to give the tree one more year to thicken...but the deer pushed that schedule forward.

By the time I got the root ball cleaned up, my hands had warmed up enough to snap a few pictures.

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I'm hoping that it's not too early to reduce the roots as much as I did. Before the deer prune, my plan was to repot after the first flush to try and reduce the roots some to get into this pot next year. Instead, I took it from about a gallon and a half of soil down to about 3 cups worth in one go!

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One good thing is the deer do prune with sharp cutters! The trims were nice and clean! I took off the main trunk, but I left the branches at where the deer wanted them. They were pruned a few months ago, but since I had cut paste all over my fingers from applying it to the trunk cut, I dabbed a little on the branch tips as well.

I was going to flat top the bald cypress I had bought this pot for. I'm not sure if I'll go that route with this tree or not. If it wakes up, I'll probably just let it grow for a year or two and evaluate the options then...
 

sorce

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Nice! I don't even remember that pot!

Can we get a closeup?

Love.

Sorce
 

LittleDingus

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Nice! I don't even remember that pot!

Can we get a closeup?

Love.

Sorce

Of the pot? Your pictures from when I bought it in 2019 are here:


I wasn't me back then...I was somebody else...

Of the tree? If I can remember I'll get some tomorrow. It's out in the barn chillin...
 

sorce

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pictures from when I bought it in 2019

Awesome! Thanks for bringing this back!
No wonder I've been confused at the high number!

Thank you sir! Thank you very much!

Sorce
 
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