small leafed linden

[August44]

I have a pretty nice small leaf Linden that I got from Brent but have no idea how, when to prune and what it's supposed to look like when done. I can post pictures if needed. Help appreciated. Peter

 

[Forsoothe!]

Large leaves look good displayed on flat horizontal branches because of the way they hang. Standard formal upright with wider than normal and taller than typical to keep the leaves in-scale. As here, the lowest righthand branch died and ruined the appearance. To my great chagrin.

 

[August44]

To bad about the major branch loss. Wonder why that happened? Had you root pruned recently? Thanks for the pictures.

 

[LanceMac10]

Too much "pinching" new shoots?

 

[0soyoung]

• A general rule for all plants is to prune during times when extension of new growth has (seemingly) ceased.
  • A corollary to this is to cut back no further than to a visible bud and/or branch (which is what a bud will become).
  • Removing soft new growth (often = pinching) saps the vigor of a plant (which we sometimes want to do in bonsai - habitual pinching is bad).
• Generally, one must decapitate a branch to affect back budding; that is remove the branch tip.when new growth has (seemingly) ceased.
  • IOW defoliation alone tends to just produce a few new leaves.
  • the most distal remaining buds assume the role of branch tips
  • A branch tip that has become a flower bud is effectively decapitated

There are exceptions, but it varies with the variety of the plant and the season it is done (aka, 'it depends').

Branches are largely autonomous (that is what happens to one largely has no effect on the others). So, one can experiment by applying a treatment to a single branch instead of the entire plant.​

 

[Forsoothe!]

• A general rule for all plants is to prune during times when extension of new growth has (seemingly) ceased.
  • A corollary to this is to cut back no further than to a visible bud and/or branch (which is what a bud will become).
  • Removing soft new growth (often = pinching) saps the vigor of a plant (which we sometimes want to do in bonsai - habitual pinching is bad).
• Generally, one must decapitate a branch to affect back budding; that is remove the branch tip.when new growth has (seemingly) ceased.
  • IOW defoliation alone tends to just produce a few new leaves.
  • the most distal remaining buds assume the role of branch tips
  • A branch tip that has become a flower bud is effectively decapitated

There are exceptions, but it varies with the variety of the plant and the season it is done (aka, 'it depends').

Branches are largely autonomous (that is what happens to one largely has no effect on the others). So, one can experiment by applying a treatment to a single branch instead of the entire plant.​

Sort of. I think it is, or at least should be, well understood that I espouse pinching of new growth tips on deciduous. It usually does two things: stops or slows greatly the growth rate of the group of new emerging growth of which that tip is the primary bud and the new wood (green wood) that flowers often grow on, so it does cancel flowering on that branch.
If you wait until the growth has ceased you accept whatever the normal internode length is. If you remove the tip bud in autumn, some percentage of species have time to adjust and assign the next bud down as primary with very little change in spring growth except the direction the terminal bud faces and if that was to be blooming wood. If done in late winter, most species will transition all secondary buds in that cluster to primary, as stated above.

Pinching is effective because it reduces growth where done. If that's not what you want, you don't do that. Maintaining a tree shape is different from creating one. I do maintenance of a finished canopy in autumn when all the leaves are off. I trim back to some point where, after the new growth has emerged, the desired, same-as-last-year shape is maintained. Naturally, every species is a little different and you have to modify the process. For Tamarack, I pinch ALL secondary growth which comes in the form of extension of the center of foliage bundles. Only the few that are allowed to extend, at all, are those that will be extending the length of a branch. Most of those will be pinched, too, but just a little later when they are the length I want. I remove any bud that points in the wrong direction after the trees defoilate in autumn and again in spring before they leaf out.

Decapitating branches sometimes begets back budding, again, depending upon species. I hate stubs. I would rather drive back-budding in the more time consuming way hard pruning short of chopping. To each, their own. Whatever kind of pruning you do, you have to apply it to the whole tree. As stated above, each branch is a separate part of the tree and just chopping one low branch invites that branch to die while the rest of the tree does whatever it was going to do.

Defoliation in mid to late June reduces the size of the leaves that emerge, in most species, and increases ramification by ramifying twice in one year. Walter Pall's system of shearing creates dense heads of tight foliage. I will be following his system on some trees beginning this August.

I expect that someone will offer a species that won't respond as I described. Again, every species is a little different and some will drop dead if the wrong process is applied. I once defoliated a Burning Bush in June and it stayed that way until the next spring.

 

[Forsoothe!]

To bad about the major branch loss. Wonder why that happened? Had you root pruned recently? Thanks for the pictures.

Live and learn. Or, live and learn sometimes. Now that I am older and wiser and a great master of whatever, I look at that photo and want to slap myself on the back of my head. The branch that died is screaming, "I don't got enough foliage down here, and if I don't get some better light, I'm outa' here".