Theories:
The plant had an "annual" cycle that didn't jive coming from one climate to the next or the climate at hand was way too unpredictable all in the same, terms. The buds never hardened off properly and the entire "woody plant" kept itself in a flexible to temperatures dormant-ish type of stage.

I can't see any other reason why something would bud out way too early with following severe consequences, "ultimate death."

Theory #2:
Who the hell knows why...

Theory #3, the roots simply didn't have the ability to push the buds/shoots due to a lacking of strength.

Root disease.... Dried up roots, unhealthy roots. Seems to me it would be in the roots more than any other thing bearing in mind, climate...

Dax

i didnt mean to imply that elongation started early ....

lets just assume its a regular spring .... everything budding at the same time.. and appropriate time ...

lol .. i would like to move beyond theory 2 above.. since i have relied heavily on it in the past .... lol

ken

Hope this isn't perceived as changing the subject; the intention is to add similar problem that perhaps has the same diagnosis.

A plant will sail through summer, but when fall arrives instead of the expected new growth, it dies.

I'm thinking damaged roots for both the spring and fall demise. There is enough energy stored to push buds (or get through summer) but when time comes to actually start the growth cycle there are not enough roots so sustain the plant.

Barbara

what grows in fall ....???

mine all go downward toward dormancy ...

i was always under the impression ... oh i will start a new post ....

ken

"There is enough energy stored to push buds (or get through summer) but when time comes to actually start the growth cycle there are not enough roots so sustain the plant."

Generally the case with B&B conifers when not dug properly.

Ken..."then all of a sudden its dead ..."

Chamaecyparis thyoids 'Red Star' is a good candidate to pull that stunt on you. I could list others... Chamaecyparis lawsoniana cultivars...tough to grow and figure out... at lest for me. I don't think you grow those.

Dave

as you predicted .... my red star died on transplant from nursery to field ...

on one order from stanley .... i went with half a flat of $4 laws... on the theory that if anyone could do it... i could .. you know the rest... been losing 1 or 2 or 3 per year since ...

after this winter.. there might be one left... looks like at least 4 others are dead ugly .... ugly roughly translates into... dead to me... i am through with that nonsense ...

so i guess the answer to dave is.. no i dont grow any of those ...

i do 2nd year grafts [read that CHEAP]... havent done a BB since way back when.. and now that i think about it.. that is when i had the most sudden death syndrome ... SDS ....

and apparently ... when i transplant and move stuff .. i do better digging than unknown minimum wage BB guys .... or the fact.. that with pre digging the new hole... the two minutes out of the ground is significant, compared to wrapping.. and transporting across country ...

ken

I was thinking more in terms of a rootstock that is damaged by cold, perhaps by being less hardy than the top.
Heat or fungal damage in summer....

Barbara

Perhaps a bit OT, but Ken, you might be interested in some of the standard guidelines for nursery stock production. B&B size information and recommendations start on page 15.

Here is a link that might be useful: ANLA Standard for Nurery Stock

Ken,

I have a theory going that 'red Star' and a few other chamaecyparis are just duds. I have two 'red star' and three 'golden sprite' that are either dead, dying, or in some form stress.

I don't know if it's a cutting issue vs. grafting or what but they just don't do well in the ground. Maybe they're better suited for container culture.

Ken, your description is so lacking in detail and precision as to make it interpretable (a word?)only by those who have no embarrassment. Try again.
However.....can we just delete "push" from our vocabulary?

I am not embarrassed to say I generally understand Ken quite well and enjoy his humor.
May I ask what you find lacking in the term "push"? What is the correct descriptive word used in it's place?

Thanks,

Barbara

what parts lacking pinetree ...

they come out of suspended animation from a zone 5 winter .... the buds grow an inch or two ... of the perhaps expected 6 to 12 inches ...

i get a frost... or freeze ... on a plant that just went through being frozen for 4 months... and i come back a week later .. and its brown and dead ...

any better??

ken

With some thousand conifer cultivars planted in the last year and a half, I should be a good case study for this as well. Many plants were bought as young plants through Stanley and Sons, Coenosiums, Girards, etc. online and many of them were planted this fall/winter. I will keep strict notes on my losses and try to pass them on here - or another newer post.

Up until this post, I had never heard of this before.

Will

Being able to cope with late frosts is a big part of a plant's hardiness. Their hardiness can depend on either waiting until the threat of frost has passed or being able to take it after bud-break/pushing, regardless of prior low temps. And, I suppose, also what happens after the frost (ie. sunny, windy, droughty, wild temp swings, etc).

When push comes to shove, I guess I've used push interchangably for bud-break on either established plants or grafts. Kind of a local vernacular type thing. Is it wrong?

tj

I know I'm on a hobbyhorse, but I spent decades studying shoot growth, mainly in pines, and have some strong convictions on how best to approach and describe it. First, you need a model of normal development. Then when something unusual happens, you can intuit what is causing it. Example -- in northern pines of the simplest structure (ponderosa, strobus, Austrian, Scots, etc.) the apical meristem inside the leading bud tip forms a winter bud in the late summer. This goes dormant. Next spring, it comes out of dormancy after receiving enough cold for its chilling needs, and then enough heat to stimulate cell division. Gotta have both. Then the bud elongates into a shoot, exposing the fascicles that overwintered in the bud as miniatures. During elongation, a new bud is forming to repeat this cycle. Length of the new shoot is determined by the number of fascicles formed in the bud the previous year. These fascicles have a very strong tendency to space out on the new shoot evenly at a distance apart that varies by species.Drought in the spring prevents the full distance from being achieved (and needles reaching their full length). That's why transplants with injured roots have "brush" shoots with short needles jammed together. That damaged tree will probably put few new fascicles into its next bud, so next year's shoot will have normal fascicle spacing but fewer of them, and will also be shorter than it should. But the next bud should have normal number of fascicles, and full spacing between them, and therefore a nice long shoot should develop from it.
This "mind-model" does have nuances and ins-and-outs; but it's a good starting point for understanding simple pines. More complex pines like contorta, southern pines, jack and Monterey take more work to figure out. Spruces and firs are much like simple pines in structure.
Trees without buds (Cypress family) are another story.
As for nutrients -- the elongating shoot produces hormones that cause the older needles to export carbs to the growth areas. By mid-summer the new shoots are living off their own photosynthesis; and then they start to store the excess so next year they can help out the newer shoots now appearing. This goes easier with a blackboard!
Don't mean to diss anyone, I just feel strongly that bad vocabulary creates muddy thinking.

Well, why do you assume that the tree made it through winter okay? The tree is dormant during winter, then in spring when the tree system has to ramp up to 100% capacity the damaged "machine" stresses, breaks down, and fails...? Can it start to grow but if it can not support the growth, the tree gets too weak and fails completely?

Even cut branches and x-mas trees stay green outside in the cold for a couple months. A cut flower still has the energy to bloom before death, thou not sure if that analogy is a stretch. When does a branch or tree reach the point of no return?

pinetree said:

leading bud tip forms a winter bud in the late summer. This goes dormant. Next spring, it comes out of dormancy after receiving enough cold for its chilling needs, and then enough heat to stimulate cell division.

i didnt know this in some pines... i know certain length dormancy is required in hosta e.g. .... but never thought of carrying the logic over to conifers ...

would this be why some of the pines that grow in z5 .. wont grow down south .... perhaps among other reasons ...

then noki said: why do you assume that the tree made it through winter okay?

but i said in the initial post... that they "APPEAR" .... to be OK ... and therein lies the problem in my zone of suspended animation ... i swear an evergreen [yes.. the general term] .. might die in september.. but with the cooling temps.. and the suspended animation of winter .... MIGHT be looking all green and happy come spring thaw ... but in all actuality .. be dead as a doorknob .... only to start browning when the heat starts rising again in late spring ... i wonder if a conifer with dead roots.. could actually start pushing buds.. only to later fail.. when there is nothing being produced to replace the reserve ...

part of the whole point of this post.. is to show newbies.. that frankly.. there are so many variables... we may never know why a given plant fails ...

ken

Very informative pinetree...thank you. I am here to learn; in the few minutes it took to read, your explanation taught much about the physiology of shoot formation.

Back to basics: what do you recommend as an abbreviated term, understood by a layperson, for the visual phenomenon of a conifer initiating seasonal growth?

Thank you,
Barbara

Barbara,Bud elongation in pines.
Budbreak in firs, spruces, Douglas-fir.

The difference is that in pines the bud scales are attached at all levels in the bud.
In the other Pinaceae the bud scales are all attached at the base of the bud, so new shoot growth either breaks them off and lets them ride up on the new growth (spruces), or they are spread apart by the new growth but remain where they were.
Ken, I have even seen slash pine in Florida not flush during a January when temps were up to 90F. and rainfall plentiful. I believe they finally flushed in March.

Hi. I think you can probably blame the French (who else) for creating the confusion.The verb 'pousser' (poo-say) means 'to grow' but also 'to push',as in pushing somebody off a cliff. T.

ah, bien sure.