My opinion is that the difference is pretty minimal. Redbuds are such quirky trees that I wouldnt expect to be able to have two symmetrical or matched, if that’s what you were hoping.

In my experience redbud trees are fussy and inexplicable in how they grow! At our previous house in the 1980s we planted one of the pink-flowering ones. Every year it would die back to near the ground and then regrow from there. Now, 23 years after we moved, it has become a nice, normal normal-looking tree. Here, we planted two white-flowering ones. One is a nice normal upright tree; the other is shorter and grew lopsided - we had one side pruned off this spring… That tree, for no obvious reason, had more winter-kill than the other, although both produce a reasonable showing of spring flowers. None of that offers any practical explanations for you; my advice is - if you like the trees and they bloom for you, ignore the differences!

yes.. give the other one another year to catch up ...

tree time is counted in decades.. and you are worried about one outgrowing the other in 12 months.. ...

chill dude ...

nothing to see here.. lets move on.. and dont kill the smaller one with some application of too much love.. in ten years/ if they live so long.. you will see no difference ....

ken

I've planted two of the same thing a few times and there are always size and vigor differences. I've often wondered, too, what the heck causes this. Trees are just weird like that!

And illini fan, your Fighting Illini worked over my Wyoming Cowboys pretty good last Saturday. Looks like you have a pretty stout squad this year.

I keep hoping the football team clicks sooner or later. I have been drinking the basketball Kool-Aid for years, but don’t quite have the same expectations for the football squad

If they were potted for any significant time before planting, they may have various amounts of root-binding which would slow it down.