# Anyone played with trees?



## mort (26 Jul 2016)

Has anyone made a multi stem tree before. I'm a huge birch fan and been looking at the multi stem specimens you see which seem to be all the rage at the moment. Was wondering if anyone had played with them a little and whether it was better long term for them if you topped a sapling and encouraged it to stem rather than simply putting 3 or more seedlings in a pot and letting them grow together. I have 7 or 8 silver birch that I've grown so wanting to experiment a little. Appreciate any ideas.


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## dw1305 (26 Jul 2016)

Hi all, 





mort said:


> Has anyone made a multi stem tree before. I'm a huge birch fan and been looking at the multi stem specimens you see which seem to be all the rage at the moment. Was wondering if anyone had played with them a little and whether it was better long term for them if you topped a sapling and encouraged it to stem rather than simply putting 3 or more seedlings in a pot and letting them grow together. I have 7 or 8 silver birch that I've grown so wanting to experiment a little. Appreciate any ideas.


You can do either, thirty years ago I worked for a tree nursery where we used the topping method to produce multi-stem _Betula utilis jacquemontii, _but some ended up misshapen. With that proviso you should eventually end up with a better tree than planting three saplings.

This is what you aim for,  but you need to leave the lower branches (feathers) on when the tree is growing to make the trunks bulk up. Usually you would prune the feathers to about 1/2 way each winter until the trunks have bulked up (when you can prune them off at the base).






cheers Darrel


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## mort (26 Jul 2016)

Thanks for that Darrel. Can I ask how large you would let them develop being topping? at the moment they are only 6" or so and I've read you should let them grow 2-3ft to let them strengthen a little and then reduce. I'm not in a hurry and already have one which seems to have naturally grown a few stems (hopefully that will stay that way without developing a single trunk).


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## dw1305 (27 Jul 2016)

Hi all,





mort said:


> at the moment they are only 6" or so and I've read you should let them grow 2-3ft to let them strengthen a little and then reduce.


 That sounds about right, when the  seedlings are un-branched they are "maidens". If you top them when they are a bit taller you can get a multi-stem on a <"short leg">.  

When you look at a woody plant, before you prune it, you need to know where the buds are, and then you can visualise where the new shoot will grow after you've removed the apical bud (which has <"apical dominance">).

As well as causing adventitious buds to break removing apical dominance will cause secondary thickening of the trunk. 

All a pioneer tree species like a Birch is programmed to do is put all its energy into growing as tall as possible, as quickly as possible. We don't usually want that, so we need to prune it to grow into the shape we do want. 

cheers Darrel


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## mort (27 Jul 2016)

Thanks for that Darrel.


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## zozo (2 Aug 2016)

My brother had one in the garden with 3 stems, it was already there when he bought the house many years ago, it stoot right next to the balkoni. It was as tall as his 3 story house.
Birch is a beautifull tree, but a real dirtbag, it sheds multiple times a year and atracks a huge number of flying insects. It was impossible to BBQ or even sit on his balkoni without doing the Aussie Salute all the time.. He took it down last year because of that.

I live in a former mining area, so we have loads of Birch everywhere.. In the mining days these trees where planted and cultivated, now the mines are gone there are birch forests left all over the place. You still kinda see them all still standing neatly lined up at many places. Birchwood was used to strut the mine shafts. Every second pilar was birchwood, its a natural alarmsystem, it makes a lot of noise before it finaly snaps.. So if the birch started making cracking noises, the shaft was about to collaps and time to get out..


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## mort (2 Aug 2016)

Hi zozo, I love birch and have a nearly 3 storey tree in the back garden that I grew from seed. I don't find any of the issues you mention (perhaps as it's a different species) but I do keep the canopy open.

Very interesting about the mines.


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## slawson_92 (2 Aug 2016)

agree with zozo, large birch shed a lot and they are liked by insects particulate aphid so you can get quite a sticky mess under a tree, however a smaller multistem tree is less prone to this problem. 

also i would always top a sapling, planting multiple trees close together dose not work long term due to the greater apical dominance they get leggy and are lose health in there competitiveness


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## zozo (2 Aug 2016)

Hi Mort, yes that could very well be.. I do not know what kind of birch it was, would need t ask if he knows. All i know it was a large dirt bag, early summer shedding pollen then it's blossoms then it's leaves. When everything falls on the balkoni and ends up in your roofs rain gutter it migh be a different experience than if it stands far away from the house. We generaly have south-west wind and this one stoot behind the house in the lee and everything always fell straight down. But it was a lovely very decorative  tree to see.. I see a lot of multi stems around, seems to be something they do naturaly as well.

I know these stories from my dad, he was a miner for 28 years. Seems pine has the same propertie to make noise before it snaps.. Birch was also used for stabelization of those very big waste piles (coal mountains) we call them. And in the early days environmental protection wasn't such a big deal, so those mountains contained everything the mines wanted to get rid off.. So also a lot of chemical pollution. And the birch seems to be a pioneer tree one of the first to appear on polluted soil, so they planted those trees on the waste piles. 

This is a very typical sight when i go for a walk where i live..


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## mort (2 Aug 2016)

That picture looks like it could be from Wales in the mining areas, except it's more slate slag piles.


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## mort (2 Aug 2016)

slawson_92 said:


> agree with zozo, large birch shed a lot and they are liked by insects particulate aphid so you can get quite a sticky mess under a tree, however a smaller multistem tree is less prone to this problem.
> 
> also i would always top a sapling, planting multiple trees close together dose not work long term due to the greater apical dominance they get leggy and are lose health in there competitiveness



Our tree is part of the border so we don't walk under it, the plants may therefore cover many of the mess. I also have raised the canopy so there is no foliage until just over head height and I do take out the main stem every year or so to bush it out and keep it shorter.


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## zozo (2 Aug 2016)

mort said:


> That picture looks like it could be from Wales in the mining areas, except it's more slate slag piles.



That's only a kilometer from my place, southern Netherlands. Coal mine ruble piles.  we had a few almost 150 meters high, that was historical sky line back then, most of them are flatend and converted to parks.. I used to dig around there as a kid to find fosils or pyrite etc. But found more cupper wires and old empty explosive cartridges and other foreign materials and birch trees.. Sometimes even very rock ( i guess antracithe) with rather beautiful shapes for in aquarium, but i guess because of all the junk and stuff dumped there not wise to build an ecosystem around it. Never took some home..


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