Another picture closer up. The screen at the base is to keep critters from gnawing at the bark, it is not tight.

Huh. that road looks very familiar.

Nonetheless, looks sad. Surely that thing to keep the voles-rabbits off is helping make it sad (I use mesh about 18" in diameter and stuck in the ground a bit). I'd defer to the standard...what is that...Rule #1: misplanted. Or similar, forget now. Anyway, what does 'despite my watering' mean? Once a month? When your finger wasn't wet?

This post was edited by WxDano on Tue, Mar 19, 13 at 0:39

The fiberglas screening at the base is not tight and can be rotated around the trunk by hand. Rabbits especially lke too chew on the bark of younger trees. During the drought last summer, I spent a couple hours almost every other evening watering the ground around the trunk where the mulch is. To my credit, all the mature transplants made it through the summer. The root flare is visible at the base, and last summer I did cut back some suckers.

I thought Ken was always saying one couldn't kill Dogwoods....

ooohhh nooo.. ken refuses to grow dogwood .... because they are the foo-est of the foo.. in my z5 winter wind swept rural MI ... POS trees IMHO .... [yes.. i know they should work for me.. but at a hundred or two a pop.. just how many times are you going to mess around with them.. and no.. i never tried the native ones] .....

boy do you have me confused with someone else.. lol ...

first off.. is this one of the plants you dragged around with your truck??? .. and how long ago was it planted ....

and who did that interpretive pruning ... second pic.. all the die back is related to such .... and i cant tell where pic two is.. on pic one ... weird ....

i will guess.. you have had a rough a winter as we have had.. 200 mile east of you.. if a recent transplant.. plus winter.. i am not surprised..

but as you note.. only time will tell.. how well it buds out.. if at all ... the red part sure looks vigorous.. meaning it hasnt all turned black on the road to perdition ...

ken

ps: BTW.. i think i am getting one this spring.. lol ...hope springs eternal ... lol ...

Here is a link that might be useful: i like the damnation part.. lol ...

It looks fine to me, the dead stubs normally turn black as the die off. This isn't a tree type dogwood and shouldn't be treated that way, it's a suckering shrub. If there was one thing you did wrong it was cutting off the suckers that sprouted, they were growing in order to regenerate the top. Depending on the type you have it will probably max out at around 4-5 feet. It's grown for the red twigs of the new growth so usually people will cut out any sprouts older than that.

Let the suckers grow, if you feel brave cut the whole thing back to about 6 inches to encourage more suckering and then let the suckers take over. Pinch the tips at about 1 ft if the bush looks sparse.

Suckers....red twigs.....is that a red twig dogwood bush? Or Cornus florida the dogwoods tree?

I have both in my yard and when a volunteer pops up I have to wait until winter to figure out which I have.

Gosh, surely that's a red-twig dogwood! Farmboy, you need to look those up what your shrub is supposed to look like.

Yeh, Ken, you know me. This was dug out of someone's yard 2.5 years ago and planted in my front yard. It was originally, err, guided? to grow as a tree, not a shrub. The odd shape was already there when I got it, and wasn't made any better when I pruned off some dead sections last fall.

Yes, it has been a tough time; it suffered the drought last summer, then the early part of this winter was cold and dry. It is on the Eastern side of the house, so gets sheltered from the high winds and hard afternoon sun from the West.

My thought is that if it continues to progress downhill, remove it and replace it with a nice flowering crab apple (is there such a thing?).

Thanks!

vince

Nothing wrong w/a red-twig-type dogwood, but it's a suckering shrub, not a tree like a flowering dogwood. So don't cut off anything other than dead branches -- let the suckers grow. I have a red-twigger myself -- they grow easily from stems simply stuck in the ground in the spring & watered. And they seem less prone to dogwood anthracnose, dogwood sawflies and full-sun burning than flowering dogwood.

If you don't like that "style", replace it w/something you like.

This post was edited by beng on Tue, Mar 19, 13 at 10:30

I missed the 'torturing into a tree' bit.

Agree that it is a multi-stemmed shrub. We have several on our property line that I take care of - only to the extent I cut out the dead wood. The dark material around the base helps with the overall malaise of the plant.

ok farmboy vince..

its about time.. you start trying a little latin ... common names.. get you common naswers ....

all my comments regarding foo.. are about flowering dogwoods .. nothing i said relates to redtwig dogwood .. [which i wont bother with either.. but for different reasons ...]

you throw out some common name.. aka dogwood.. who the hell knows what you are talking about ...

if it is in fact.. redtwig dogwood..

run it over with your truck.. cut off the broken trunk.. AND LET IT BE THE SHRUB ITS SUPPOSED TO BE ...

there.. done with it.. lol .. experiment by doing such.. and you can replace it next year.. or this fall.. lets see how the experiment works out ... truck and all ...

ken

Flowering dogwoods - Cornus florida, Cornus kousa and the like - do not have colored stems. Shrub dogwoods typically do: red, maroon, orange/yellow, even chartreuse. Colored stems in winter are usually what they are most often grown for as the flowers are insignificant. But as others have noted, they are suckering shrubs and while some can reach almost tree-like sizes (10+ feet is not uncommon for our native redtwigs), they do not grow in a typical, single trunked tree-like habit.

Since these are not very expensive shrubs, I'd be highly inclined to get rid of this eyesore and replace with a real flowering dogwood tree. This specimen is NOT what you want front and center and very visible in your front yard!!

Time to come outta the doghouse, for a little while...

I stopped at a Homie Depot yesterday to get some things, and they had their first batch of trees and shrubs outside. A quick look found some young Cornus Florida trees, and lo and behold, the branches were on the reddish side. Not quite as red as some on the tree-like shrub I have, but also not as brown as most trees. So, I feel as vindicated as a Vinny can be in referring to this thing I have as a Dogwood tree, as it is definitely a tree-like shape and it is a Dogwood.

I'll probably dig it up and move it to the back this spring, when the ground thaws. In the meantime, I'll make a separate post to find a better looking replacement to look for.

Thanks for the enlightening replies!

vince

leave it to home depot to not know how to label. Cornus Florida blooms in mid spring and not summer, kousa on the other hand blooms from late spring- early summer.

Gardenapprentice, they do bloom in summer in Maine!! Well, close enough to June that I consider it summer anyways. Kousas in the coastal botanic garden were nearing peak bloom in the first week of June last year and that was a year with a freakishly early warm up (everything happened comparatively early in the calander year). They may not bloom until mid June this year with the way this cold weather is plugging along.

John