And just to add, would cutting one or the other be a good idea? It seems to be a good percentage of the total root mass but then there are several other roots this size further down, radially located around the trunk.

as long as you are sure the one heading right does not circle .. i suspect you might be trying to fix that which is not broken ...

nice soil ...

seedling to 4 feet in one season .. lol ... a new variation on the tree time theory ... thank god its not in your gutter ...

ken

I'd remove the root that is curling under. Some trees have roots that readily graft together while others do not. Better to play it safe than sorry. And a tree that small should quickly recover. In dealing with bare root planting, I always remove roots that crisscross another and haven't yet fused together.

You'd better cut the lower root off because otherwise if you leave the tree looking like that then you're really going to have to hand it a hat and cane.

Ok, 3 yay's and a maybe. Good enough!

I just didn't know if leaving it would work if the increasing trunk girth would eventually absorb the defect. Or as the roots enlarged in diameter it would get more ugly over time.

Why such a small seedling kept in a pot over one winter then planted in the ground would go haywire like that, idk.

I noticed another root @ 12:00 that goes straight north so there's anchoring on both sides of the tree.

Here's the cut.

The lower root did go straight @ 2:00, after curving several inches.

The root increased in depth as it went.

Oh ken, the tree is only 45" tall, my bad. ;-)

Thanks for the help all.

Why such a small seedling kept in a pot over one winter then planted in the ground would go haywire like that

Depends on if it was in the pot long enough before then to be deflected by pot walls - cold winter adapted plants basically hibernate during winter

that pic of the removed part finally provides a scale ... crikey.. i though the roots were over an inch thick ...

if i had known it was barely a 1/4 inch.. i would have said you should have cut it off without wasting 3 days.. talking about it ...

ken

Embo,

I found the tree coming from a seed under one of my spruce, the leaf was bright red so it must've been at least the end of summer. I dug it out with a hand trowel in a clump just big enough to fit into a 5" pot. It's was the one I overwintered in a 5 gal pail of wood mulch. It had maybe a month or two in the pot before the weather got cold so the extending roots started circling during that time. I never thought of checking them either when I planted that spring. Lesson learned.

ken, maybe 3/8" dia. possibly 1/2" dia. near the trunk. Still a pretty good pull to dislodge it from the soil. And no wasted time, I was busy all weekend and didn't get to it until Sunday evening. Thanks anyway!.

Either that or this particular seedling is unusually modest.

Looking back, I overwintered the tree winter of 2017-2018 and re-potted it in the spring. Stayed in that pot until August 2018, so it was pot resident way longer than I thought.

July 21st 2018.

Planted in the ground August 21st 2018:

Time flies when you're having fun. :-)