My Norway spruce rarely gets damaged (didn't this time), but my fir does, and the resulting secondary buds that sprout (they will) never reach the length of the typical damage-free growth. Not even close.

i dont understand ....

are they just still dormant buds ...

or are you talking about elongating active spring growth???

how about a pic or 3???

whatever it is ... it will not.. as you say ... 'right away .. find a new leader' ... nothing in tree time happens right away ...

with pungens.. the birds CONSTANTLY land on the leaders ... and stuff happens.. its nbd .. and pia .. lol ..

dont over react just because they are new babes ... the tree.. in tree time. will figure it out .. and if you dont like it.. you can do something about it.. in a year or two ...

ken

Ugh. Let me put down the coffee and go out there with the camera.

My baby.

i think a weevil got the leader last year but a different bud took over, this year it’s a bigger loss.

Since some of you like hostas

and hostas look great with the bright yellow of hakone grass

The expanding buds on pendula look like they're already going to try and fight for the lead, yesterday they were still coming out more sideways. Good to know there's some hope for secondary buds on the spruce. It was such a small graft that even after 5 years I could still kill it with a single poorly placed footstep, every bit of new growth helps. The rabbits don't help.

They were all damaged in a freeze a few days ago.

Picea torano is the only spruce that I've never seen "any" bud damage occurring on!

This plant is just now showing slight bud expansion.

Johnny

Most of the younger plants showed some damage, but the older ones aren't as eager to get going and most are ok. Except for the blue spruces, some of the older ones have random buds fried but nothing that will look bad past May.

katob, the bud damage doesn't look "total", so should recover reasonably well. Bud damage on my fir is 100%, tho embedded secondary buds will eventually sprout.

Beng I hope your fir is recovering again.

My spruce seems to have this re-leader thing down to a science. One bud went up, the other two knew their place and went out, just like they were supposed to. Next year I'm sure the kid will take a bat to it or some other new tragedy will pop up but for now it looks ok.

Is that a Bush’s Lace?

It should be a picea glauca ‘pendula’ but you never know...

I did nip a few tips here and there to make up for two years of lost leaders.