AusBonsai

I've seen this plenty of times on cut-down gums. They usually send up these types of shoots. Sometimes they grow but usually they all just die off and the tree's gone.

I have had this occur occur on one of a batch of seedlings of Brachychiton discolour, a rainforest tree from NE NSW and SE QLD, that were propagated by the Coffs Harbour Botanic Garden. The main stem was still alive and looked no different to the rest of the batch, but the base had a large nodule with hundreds of minute leaves coming from very short stems. I repotted all and tried to not disturb the growth to see what would happen. Over a period of months the stems started dying off and a few produced larger leaves. These were no more than 5mm across and still on very short stems. These also started to die off so I chopped the top to try and encourage more growth, but it grew a new shoot and the rest died off. I had a closer look at this stage, and although there was still green amongst the growth, it would crumble away easily and as I broke bits off I found it was only attached to the trunk by an area less than 10mm round. The growth was a little smaller than a golf ball.

My theory is that a bud in development started differentiating into new buds and just didn't stop. There were literally hundreds of minute, less than 1mm leaves in a very small area and they are usually at least the size of a adult hand. How or why this happened I can't say, but the plants were well over due for a repot and some damage to the stem may have contributed.

treeman wrote:I've seen this plenty of times on cut-down gums. They usually send up these types of shoots. Sometimes they grow but usually they all just die off and the tree's gone.

....and this is exactly what happened. It is now dead.

G'day Sno,

I'm up late again just researching and re-reading some old posts.
Just wondering what's happening or happened with the tree in the original post? Not sure if Rory was referring to your tree or his.
Re-reading this post and looking at your photos, which i hadn't picked up on originally - very old dead stump - extremely fresh regrowth - fresh sawdust lying within and around the stump.
Maybe the 7 P's are in progress or has the tree passed?

Thanks,
Kevin

Its possible peeps, keep the dream alive

Jake

Hi Kevin . The old stump is still alive . I haven't touched it and I am not going to dig it . There is much better material out there that would be easier to collect . I will try to take some cuttings on the off chance they strike ,just to see what happens . The sawdust is probably from borers .
Cheers Sno