What I Do When They Grow Really Fast

This Water-elm, Planera aquatica, was collected on August 11th of this year. It’s a really nice triple-trunk specimen, as you can see. It came back from collection quickly, and has thrown foot-long shoots. It’s certainly a strong tree. So what would you do about that?

Well, there’s no doubt I could wait until Spring 2019 to begin styling this specimen. But I can get a head-start on the design if I style it now. You may wonder if this will put the tree at risk. The short answer is no. The longer answer has to do with the characteristics of the species, plus the growing environment in the area where I collect them. Here’s the story.

Let’s begin with the most recent dormant period for this tree. It started in December of 2017. That’s not unusual for down south; our growing season begins in late March to early April, and then runs for 35 weeks give or take. But … not for these Water-elms. You see, up until early July this tree was under several feet of water and (of course) leafless. Back on April 1st, it was under almost 20 feet of water. This is because the collecting area is seasonally flooded to promote wildlife, especially ducks. So while most everything is growing away from April into early July, these trees are waiting for air and sunshine. Once they emerge from the flood, they start pushing growth. Then I come along and lift them, just a few weeks after they’ve managed to put on their first flush of growth for the year. I’ve always thought it was nothing short of miraculous that they can recover from all of this. But not only do they recover, they grow like weeds all through the high heat of our brutal summers. In fact, that’s when they seem to grow best (as long as you give them plenty of water).

So given all this, you can see why I have no problem styling these specimens now. I’m simply taking advantage of their natural summer vigor.

 

The next step? Remove conflicting and low shoots that don’t serve any design purpose. Remember, on your multi-trunk, forest and clump-style specimens you don’t want shoots growing into the middle space between/among the trunks, as this is not horticulturally sound. These branches will tend to weaken and die, not to mention the fact that they do not allow you to establish depth of view by obscuring sections of the trunk you want to show. So out they go. Note: as you get closer to the crown of the tree, you do want branches filling in the space between the trunks. They have to be positioned just right, of course.

Next I moved to the right-hand trunk. Again, the branches were edited to give me the essence of the tree. There’s also, if you look closely, coordination of branch positions between this trunk and the left-hand trunk. This means I avoid having branches emerging from the same level on the respective trunks.