straighten it up, and see if it begins to heal itself..it should.

I had a Live Oak tree that a buck basically striped all but an inch of bark off the tree..granted it was about 5" diameter but after a year its half grown back around.

any chance at some pix ...

is it a named variety ... or a common species??

i am trying to contemplate how much of the root mass was compromised when an 8 inch trunk was pushed to 45 degrees ... and whether you will actually be able to straighten it up ... and if you could.. whats going to keep it there ...

most likely ... its going to come down to whether you want an ugly recovering tree out front of your castle.. or whether you are better off replacing it ... just because its going to make you angry every time you see it ...

ken

Dead elm broke & fell on my 10 ft osage orange, mashing it to the ground. Pulled it back up (trimmed off several damaged branches) & secured w/rope, 10 yrs later it's OK & firm in the ground -- see the old elm stump just to the right of tree & behind, next to the telephone pole:

I would cut it to the ground. If it's going to resprout, it will do so quickly. Cut down, there is nothing to anchor or support and no top to stress the damaged roots. It would only grow back according to the level of roots that are functioning and adapt over time. If it regrows it would likely grow several trunks. If you don't want that, cut them all off but one, keeping up that regimen until it calms. If it doesn't come back, that's life. Get a new one.

Pulled it back up & secured w/rope

==>> but beng.. would you have put up with the roping out in front of the house...

i am presuming the vehicle didnt make it to the back yard ...

ken

You won't want a dogwood tree that regrows from a cut back stump. It will never become a "tree" again and will just be a mess. If comes down to that, just take it out and replace. Don't try to save it!

I would attempt to straighten it as best you can. Might require some temporary staking. Do not reduce or remove any topgrowth unless broken branches. The tree will need all that foliage to regenerate what must be a damaged - at least on one side - root system.

As long as the bark removal did not circumnavigate the trunk, it should seal off and begin to heal over.

ken, tied the rope to the telephone pole.... :)

Gardengal, where do you get that a tree regrowing from a stump would "be a mess"? It just new growth ... entirely subject to what one does with it. And no different from the concept of rejuvenation, though not initiated here by voluntary choice.

Because very few trees will respond by being cut back to a low trunk by regrowing in a tree-like form. Rejuvenation pruning doesn't apply to trees - it only applies to multi-stemmed or caning shrubs. If the dogwood resprouts from the stump (actually from shoots from the root system itself), it will just be a very stemmy, twiggy shrub.......never a tree. It will never develop a proper leader or adequate side branching.......it is just not capable of doing so.

And dogwood trees respond poorly to pruning anyway. Unless a flush cut to a branch collar, pruning cuts generate a plethora of new shoots at every cut, resulting in a dense, unattractive Medusa-like appearance. Most pruning sources when in reference to dogwood trees (not shrubs), simply say don't prune..........except to remove any damaged or diseases branches.

One more place we disagree. If it resprouts at all, it will become solely what one makes of it, capable of developing one leader, or multiple depending on what one chooses to do with it.

It doesn't work like that. You have effectively removed the apical meristem so no leader can or will be generated. You can't just remake plant biology to suit your taste.

I think y'all are talking about different types of dogwood trees. Our native dogwood tree, I haven't seen chopped to the ground and regrown. The shrubby ones, like red twig dogwood, probably would.

Since the OP hasn't been back with a picture, there is no way of knowing what is damaged.

ETA: I just hate the hit and run posts, where the OP doesn't respond to questions.

Well, the shrub dogwoods are not trees....they are typically multi-stemmed, suckering shrubs and can be treated differently. But the tree forms....Cornus florida, kousa, all the various hybrids, will not respond similarly. The OP just stated a dogwood tree with an 8" diameter trunk - that is NOT a shrub :-)

Many trees will resprout from the stump just fine. Walking through a forest which has burned a few years ago will show clumps of new growth at the stump which will rapidly become replacement trees, due to the fact they already have established root systems. In fire prone areas the trees are often not single trunks, rather pairs or threesomes.

When the practice is done on purpose it's referred to as tree coppicing, search a few images to see.

I have a flowering dogwood seedling which I had cut down a few years ago because I didn't like the position, it's regrown since and maybe I like it now and will instead cut down the juniper that I was trying to give more room to. The juniper won't grow back. Most conifers do not.

Birch clumps are usually the result of some kind of coppicing, these days it's just cheaper and faster to plant a few cuttings together though.

Not all trees are suitable for coppicing. And for a specimen tree in a front yard, a coppiced dogwood would be hideous for the reasons stated above even if it DID respond to that treatment, which I do not believe it will.

And cutting back a seedling tree is quite different from cutting back a mature one with a thick, established trunk :-)

The source of the dogwood was a seedling as opposed to a purchased plant or grafted dogwood which had been planted. Obviously it would matter since you may not want to lose the grafted cultivar... although the plain white is still excellent imo. Also imo I don't think the regrown dogwood in my front yard has been too "hideous"!

Here's an interesting sycamore at Chanticleer gardens. You can see the ring of old stump still connecting the three trees.

katob, a rock chestnut oak where I had lived in VA had seven trunks in a perfect circle, from the forest there being clear-cut in the 1930s. Most of the oaks, hickories and red maples there were stump-sprouts from that time.

Dogwoods grow with multiple trunks if one wants them like that. It doesn't need to be a suckering shrub to do that. And it would be the plant offering that possibility ... not the gardener pulling it out of the plant with a gun aimed at its head. If the plant doesn't offer that possibility, then it's saying no. If it does offer it, to then say it's an unworkable situation is simply a denial of reality. If what results doesn't please the owner, then they're free to take another course of action at any time they so choose.

Yardvaark, what????????????? Your last post does not make sense. I have never seen a native dogwood tree of any kind with multiple trunks. Where did the gun comment come from?

" Dogwoods grow with multiple trunks if one wants them like that."

Only if grown from a seed and rarely even then. Very few trees grow naturally with multi-trunks. Virtually all commercial dogwoods are grafted so no multiple trunks, ever. And somehow it seems difficult for some to understand that if one chops down an existing mature dogwood tree you are not simply going to get a multi-trunked one its place. What you will get is a short and very twiggy, shrubby looking dogwood with NO defined tree form.

Whatever it might become many years later the cut off, 8 in. thick dogwood would be an ugly sprouting stump for some time after the initial decapitation. One consisting of multiple small whippy shoots coming out of a contrastingly stout wooden butt of a base.

Does no one know how to control a regrowing plant??

Of course we do!! But not all plants will regrow in a manner that can be controllable or produce a pleasing outcome even if you think it could be controlled. And a chopped off, 8" thick trunked established dogwood tree is one of them!

Does anyone think I'm saying this is IDEAL? That we should all go out and buy and 8" caliper dogwood, chop it to the ground and start our new tree that way??? We're talking about a car-wrecked tree. The choices are throw it away at the outset. Or see if it wants to live and make something of it. The something is either a single or multi-trunk. The choice of which is within the domain of the property owner. If that person wants to do it, it's free for doing and can cause no harm. With a little effort, It can turn into a tree. If that person doesn't like the result by the end of the summer, they can throw it away.

It’s no wonder many OPs don’t come back, is it?

Yard, I am a bit surprised at your replies. This is not an either (remove entirely) or (chop it down and see what happens) situation. The simpliest and easiest step is to right the tree and see how it takes. With proper care, it should be fine.

And regardless of how many suckering stems it produces, it will never turn into an actual tree, but as Embothrium noted, just a collection of "multiple small whippy shoots coming out of a contrastingly stout wooden butt of a base". And expecting even that much by the end of summer is rather overoptimistic.

Small whippy shoots are the BEGINNING of a tree. In one form or another, they all start they way. It would take at least two years of bracing the tree to know if there was hope for straightening it.

It's a flowering dogwood - it's not going to bounce back like a healthy willow would.

It would be nice if this was a black and white dogwood, but it sounds like it might be Cornus racemosa.

Black and white dogwood....ooh I want one!

Why might it be Cornus racemosa? TheOP has gone awol and the only detail they gave was that it has an 8" diameter trunk. That's pretty hefty.

I was simply trying to inject some humor into a contentious debate (i.e. black & white vs. gray). I guess it fell short.

That was humor? Dang it I was really hoping to get this new or to Beng's point extinct dogwood.

It's on Amazon and they are out of it, because of Covid19.

thank y’all for the replies and sorry for delay in posting a photo.

Ouch!

Sorry, no saving that one.

Being it's already tilted one direction, away from the driveway, it wouldn't take much to pull it the opposite direction with a pickup truck and chain. A tree that size should come right out of the ground, roots and all. That way no stump to contend with.

Time for a new tree.

Just to add:

Hire a tree service to remove the tree and replant a nice sized new tree.

Then send the bill to insurance company of the nice young man with the yellow automobile in the picture.

That tree was worth more than the car

After seeing picture I'd get rid of it and not put anything. Find a place for a dogwood where it is not coming up into the armpits of a larger tree.

Thanks everyone for the comments. As much as I hated to let go, a friend volunteered to saw it up for free and claim the trunk for his wood pile. He said this fall we'll have a cookout and burn the dogwood in his fire pit out of remembrance. Stay safe everyone.

A truck hit my dogwood today. It took a chunk out of bottom and has a split in it. It didn't fall or anything. Do you think it will make it?

It will probably live. There's enough undamaged bark to protect nutrient delivery. Mine is in the process of regrowing from suckers up from the roots. It's about chest high now. But I do have a problem with powdery mildew on the tender new growth.