contact your seller.. and ask for replacement trees at the next proper planting season ...

a leafless tree in summer.. is 99% dead ... very low odds it will releaf next year ... and usually if there is green under the bark ... it will all dry up.. in the heat of summer ...like all things tree ... they act in slow motion ....

and i wouldnt be impressed by suckers coming up from the ground.. that means the tree died down to the soil ... or was dead that far when you got it ....

either you bought from a poor supplier ... like arborday ... or you did not plant them properly.. nor water them ... see link to fix the latter ....for future success ....

any reasonable seller will replace them ...

ken

https://sites.google.com/site/tnarboretum/Home/planting-a-tree-or-shrub

i have claimed the warranty.. and let one like this grow ... lol ...

i suspect she didnt buy expensive grafted material ...

the tree above is dead.. the roots arent.. that is why it is sprouting from down low ... it will take a year or 3 to get back the the size you bought ...

if its some fancy named cultivar tree... and it was grafted down low.. if the sprout comes from below the graft ... it would be the root tree.. not the fancy one above ... but if it were grafted.. you would probably have paid 30 to 50 dollars apiece for them ...

will repeat.. contact your seller and discuss with them ...

ken

I don't remember the exact name of the tree. It was supposed to be trees for my zone. We followed directions. We paid $20 or less for each tree so I doubt they are fancy grafted trees.

Was possibly a sugar maple but can't be sure.

I have had young trees like this one where a deer chomped off all the leaves, and another broken off at the base by vandals, and they regenerated as this one has apparently done, sending up new shoots from the roots. I agree with Dawn that this looks like a sugar maple, some sort of maple at least. I would give your trees a couple years before reading last rites on them, no matter how bad they look right now. Transplanting is traumatic for trees, and it can take them a few years to recover from it.

http://forums2.gardenweb.com/discussions/1651779/dormant-bud-attachement-strength-on-4ft-tall-tree

Hello Dawn, here is my best documented experience with a similar happening.

IMO let whatever grows grow this summer and fall, no pruning. In the spring when they are leafing out pick one or two of the strongest sprouts and cut the rest.

I would hate to prune down to one and have a hungry rabbit eat it in the winter.

You will increase its chances of growing- if you leave it-- by weeding, mulching, and keeping men with weedwackers at a 100 foot distance. If you want to know more, ask and people here can give you more detailed information.

I say cut your losses now. Yank the dead and dead looking trees and buy trees next spring from a reputable seller, like Forest Farm. I don't have the patience for trees that don't show vigorous growth early on. A sugar maple is a weed tree. Those things grow effortlessly. If it isn't leafing out now, it's exceptionally unhealthy. My neighbor across the street planted about 50 of them this spring. He's only watered them twice this summer during our drought, and yet they are all leafed out and growing like the weeds they are.

When I called it a weed tree, like Ken Adrian does, all we mean is that it grows like a weed, and doesn't need as much attention as foo foo trees and plants.

I've always heard that Sugar Maple is the only maple worth planting. Now, Silver maple is one I've heard is a weed tree, and I agree. My neighbor has them along the property line, and the branches always seem to fall off on my side of the property line. I now get off the mower and give em back, I used to just run over em over time that's alot on my mower blades.

Hoo boy, you guys don't even want to see my take on "weeds" and the proper definition of such. So here goes! Weeds, by definition, cannot be plants native to a given area. That just doesn't compute. So...calling silver maples "weeds" simply indicates that the name-caller doesn't value this species highly. That has nothing whatever to do with "weeds", which are by definition, non-native, usually herbaceous plants, usually brought about by agriculture, which have naturalized within a given area.

I just said this elsewhere in the past couple of weeks, but if you happen to own bottomland forest in roughly the north half of N. America, silver maple is a key species. It matters not whether you like silver maple....it remains an important member of the plant community that typically colonizes such sites. Oh and I could go on and on......but mercifully, won't!

My grandmother, who I miss so much, and who used to rock me to sleep for
my afternoon nap everyday til age 4, used to tell me that I was growing
like a weed. She said it to me all the time. That is the spirit of what
I meant by calling a maple a weed. Did my grandma consider me a
particular species of weed? lol Who knows, maybe she did.

When I called it a weed tree, like Ken Adrian does, all we mean is that it grows like a weed

==>>> exactly ... ignore them ... lol ..

i want to know what the seller says ... he should fess up.. if all of his stock had failed over winter or some such ...

i have mail ordered 100s of trees and conifers.. and not once was a warranty claim denied ...see what they have to say about it ... use sugar.. not nitro.. i dealing with them .. lol ...

ken

I stand corrected, it is just a tree that i don't value much, even if it is native.