Last autumn I pruned my Eucalyptus tree fairly heavily back to the "boles" and it has been fairly slow to re-grow. But suddenly it has produced lots of fresh growth out of the sides of the main truck, which it has never done before. It doesn't seem to be growing from the "boles" at the top. Should I just leave it, or take all these off? Thanks for any advice.
John N
Eucalyptus tree
Moderators: KG Steve, Chantal, Tigger, peter
Hi John,
This is their natural re-growth habit after they've taken severe damage - they have evolved to combat wildfire in Australia. We have a dozen Eucalypts here, and all of them were completely defoliated by this last winter. The ones that are not dead to the ground are now re-shooting just as yours has done, low down, directly from the trunk.
If you pruned very heavily & removed most or all of the foliage then your tree will be responding in the same way. In the long run not all of these side shoots will be able to survive and you would, in any case, end up with more of a straggly bush rather than a tree. On the other hand if you remove them now all then you could kill the tree altogether since it will be putting all of it's reserves into this new growth, and removing them won't encourage it to sprout higher up.
The best approach would be to leave some of the new shoots to grow stronger and then gradually thin them out until you have just a handful of strong growing shoots - they will put on considerable growth in just one season, as I'm sure you know. These can then be left to form the new structure of the tree.
This is their natural re-growth habit after they've taken severe damage - they have evolved to combat wildfire in Australia. We have a dozen Eucalypts here, and all of them were completely defoliated by this last winter. The ones that are not dead to the ground are now re-shooting just as yours has done, low down, directly from the trunk.
If you pruned very heavily & removed most or all of the foliage then your tree will be responding in the same way. In the long run not all of these side shoots will be able to survive and you would, in any case, end up with more of a straggly bush rather than a tree. On the other hand if you remove them now all then you could kill the tree altogether since it will be putting all of it's reserves into this new growth, and removing them won't encourage it to sprout higher up.
The best approach would be to leave some of the new shoots to grow stronger and then gradually thin them out until you have just a handful of strong growing shoots - they will put on considerable growth in just one season, as I'm sure you know. These can then be left to form the new structure of the tree.
