I love fast-developing trees. Some species and styles naturally lend themselves to rapid progress. The flat-top Bald cypress is a perfect example of this phenomenon.
This specimen was collected in Winter 2019, and here’s how it looked after the initial styling in early June. Not much to look at, but you can see where I’m going.
This is where you can take a flat-top BC in two summer months. The basic structure was established at the initial styling. From that point, there are two main chores that must be done. They aren’t hard to do, but sometimes they conflict with one another. Chore number one is vigilant control of the crown structure of the flat-top. What does this mean? BC is powerfully top-dominant. If you don’t keep a tight rein on the growth in the apex of the tree, the leaders will quickly overthicken and ruin your desired proportions. Following that initial wiring, if you don’t step in and wire the secondary branches while pruning (“cooling off”) the leaders, you won’t be happy with what happens next. The second chore is somewhat more passive: you let the lower branches run, and encourage any strong shoots that grow straight up (you can see this on the two lowest branches). These branches need to get thicker, but the top-dominance saps energy from them and there’s little you can (or should) do about it. All you can do is manage what’s going on. In year two, it gets easier to balance energy as the crown gets more finely developed and its growth rate slows.
This is the Dwarf yaupon I styled just last month. You probably remember where I started with it – essentially a hedge shrub that had been cut to some lines. So it got a big haircut and some wiring.
Yaupons grow very well in summer, so I knew this specimen would fill in quickly. This is just over a month later, and I had to trim away a lot of extra shoots before I snapped this photo. One thing to keep in mind about Yaupon, you need to wire the branches while they’re relatively tender. Once they get stiff, wiring and bending tends to produce broken rather than shaped branches. Not what you want. Summer can be one of the best times to make great strides with certain species. I hope this has given you a reason to brave the heat!
Zach,
Appreciate the bald cypress education. I am forever (or so it seems) restarting the top portion of two cypress because they get too thick. Suspect you are saying less is better than more.
Could you elaborate some on how to manage/thicken the bottom branches? You say to “let the lower branches run, and encourage any strong shoots that grow straight up”. Are you saying these shoots serve in essence as “sacrifice branches that are eventually cut off”, or do you wire them down after they enable the lower branch to thicken? Or are you saying something altogether different?
Richard, what I mean by letting the bottom branches run is that the longer they get the thicker they get, and if you are fortunate enough (almost guaranteed) to get a shoot growing straight up it will indeed be a sacrifice branch because it will thicken the primary it’s growing from a lot faster than the horizontal growing tip will.
Since the natural range of the Yaupon is mainly in the south, what sort of winter protection would it require in zone 7b in a pot? We do receive some snow but rarely fall below 20 degrees F.
Again, thanks for a most informative article.
Good developments.
Thank you, Pierre!