I am beginging to think what is it with Cercis trees and my garden. Seriously - what is going on with these trees that I love rather a lot and yet seem to all have a drama of their own?
You may recall I bought a Cercis canadensis 'Eternal Flame' last year and planted it into the newly developing shrubbery border in October. The tree was happy, I was happy, all.was.good.
Something/someone snapped it near the base. A dog, a fox, someone. This is not the first animal related cercis snapping in my garden - way back when ten years ago I had the same thing happen and luckily the tree did regrow. This I have learned about cercis trees, they want to live.
My attempt to tie the wound together so that it would heal failed rather predictably, so I dug the tree up and put it into a pot. 'Grow', I whispered to it, 'grow'.
and as Spring arrived so did the first signs of life returning. My excitement knew no bounds.
A couple more months and look, it is doing really well. It is also steadfastly green because this growth is below the graft point. The Eternal Flame had snapped at the graft point and the new growth is from the root stock. Lovely and pretty, but not what I had intended to grow.
No matter, I like this green cercis and the Eternal Flame issue was solvable.
Oh yes, definitely solvable. I bought another and popped it into the new shrubbery. At first it sulked quite a bit, but this rainy year seems to have helped it and it is now growing well. The stick is part support, part 'bugger off dog/fox and don't break this one' protection tool.
Esme is protecting the green one in the pot and that will get planted into the garden when it is big enough.
and do you remember I removed a Cercis siliquastrum 'Lavender Twist' last year because it was not planted in a sensible place and had developed a bad lean?
Well cercis want to live, its stump wants to live, so I am letting it grow to see how it develops.
However this is not the complete happy ending that I would wish for. The Cercis siliquastrum that got snapped by a dog ten years ago and recovered to grow into a lovely young tree.... well its leaves have all wilted and fallen and I don't know why. This happened a few weeks ago, it is not an autumn thing. It has not been short of water but something has really upset it. When I test the trunk there is still green so it is not dead and yet there is something really wrong. I sort of hope that next Spring it will be fine again. Time will tell.....
