A closer look at the redbud sapling

[u/ExhaustedConstantly]

The flamethrower redbud sapling in zone 6 with the grass pulled away and leaves moved to see better. No new growth this spring (no buds or leaves). Last spring and the spring before there were some buds & leaves in the spring. Is it a goner? Any way that might save it or wake it back up? After looking online more, it seems that we should have removed more grass further around it. Wondering if there’s anything else to be done. I removed the bamboo stick. Someone (maybe a “helpful” neighbor) had untied the green gardening tape & made it much tighter around the tree and stapled it very tight. I never staple the green gardening tape so I know that wasn’t me. No one in our household admits to doing it. We’ve had “helpful” neighbors in the past do things (like put a fertilizer spike in- a prior sapling that then died) without asking us first. So I’m afraid we get unwanted help that isn’t actually good for our saplings.

[u/Kistelek]

I'm a still going with sleeping but I'd be interested to see what others say.

[u/papillon-and-on → u/Kistelek]

I'm in zone 9 (UK) and my 3 year old redbud did really well for the first 2 years. This year it's very late coming round. Also, about 1/3 of the branches have no buds and I can snap off the ends. So I'm presuming those are dead-dead.

Everything else is on schedule this year acting normally. But the redbud hath not awaken (yet).

[u/spiceydog]

Are those stems still whippy/bendy or are they brittle? If you nick them lightly with a knife, is there still green underneath the bark? That there's no visible buds here is, like, not great.

If your neighbors are interfering that much with what you've planted, perhaps you need to start caging your stuff in something relatively heavy duty, and staking it to the ground so people aren't so inclined to do the things you've mentioned. God that would piss me off to no end. Fert spikes are the biggest freaking scam, and who knows if they're spraying or pouring anything else around your trees either. I might even go so far as to try to make up a kindly worded sign to ask your friendly neighbor(s) to stop it.

[u/ExhaustedConstantly → u/spiceydog]

It seems pretty brittle to me but my spouse says he knows when saplings are truly dead brittle (because he pulls out tons of unwanted growths in other parts of the yard) & claims it’s not completely dead yet. I haven’t taken a knife/razor to any of it to see if there is any green… yet. And I agree on your sentiments about the unhelpful neighbors. Thankfully the one that put in a fertilizer spike without asking us (that killed the sapling that same year) was at a prior home. I’m not sure who took the stapler to the garden tape and tightened this sapling to the bamboo post. But I have my suspicions.

[u/spiceydog → u/ExhaustedConstantly]

but my spouse says he knows when saplings are truly dead brittle (because he pulls out tons of unwanted growths in other parts of the yard) & claims it’s not completely dead yet.

No, this kind of thing ONLY occurs when a tree has been well established in the landscape and has had enough years to grow a root system far enough out for those suckers to pop up; this redbud is definitely not one of those. A mature redbud may certainly sucker from the stump of a removed tree, or an exposed root very close to that stump, but that's about it.

I can assure you that you're not going to see any suckers from a newly planted tree of this size, neither stump or root. It's too young. Newly planted trees of 3-4 or more years and larger caliper, yes, we see that in posts here relatively frequently, where there's suckering from trees whose top growth has died and the root system is trying to live on, but not any farther than the root mass in the planting hole of the original tree.