Cordyline Tree Help.
By billybob71
2 comments
Hi, I have had a green leaved cordyline australis in my front garden for the past 10yrs. It is about 18ft tall and is upto the roof fascia height. This year with the severe frosts it has shed more leaves than usual and the street is strewn with my leaves which im constantly collecting. I had noticed the stems on the crown of the tree are becoming more brown and so i took a closer inspection today and got my ladders to take a look. I tugged at a few leaves and once i started the rest just come out with little resistance. I have now taken the drastic action of cutting the whole crown off back to the stems where they branch off from the main tree stem. The million dollar question is will they start to form new shoots in time? Thanks Billybob.
2 Mar, 2011
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I'm new here, so forgive me for tagging onto someone else's post. I've been reading everyones comments about their Cordylines, but cannot find the answer (if there is one) that I need.
I planted 3 Cordylines, 1 burgundy & 2 green, about 16yrs ago. One of the green ones was an absolute beauty - it had 5 tall trunks and multiple crowns on each one. It obviously loved its position, reaching around 18/20ft high; with a huge canopy; constantly sending out flower spikes (which we removed because they're nothing spectacular and they deformed the new growth). But alas, like everyone else, thats history now!
So we cut the 2 smaller ones down to about 2" but only removed the tops of the large multi stemmed one because it was such a lovely/large feature and, in the vain hope, it might sprout from the top again... although I doubt that will happen.
The good news is, all 3 have sprouted, the large one from the base of one of the trunks and the other two have sprouted about 2" away from the original trunk, which is really exciting, although I doubt I'll see them reach such dizzying heights again!
My question (eventually I hear you say)... I refuse to cut the large trunks down and have decided, while I wait for the base shoots to establish themselves, I want to make a feature of the other 4 trunks... a large natural bird table? A squirrel theme park? Or, my latest idea, could I use it to grow something else? Either use moss or bore holes to poke in some small plants or colourful fungi, etc? I've already got two hanging baskets at different heights which look lovely and its created a talking point, if nothing else!
Does anyone have any bright ideas or suggestions... I dont want anyone to mention ivy, thanks!
I just wanted to share my good news with others and my suggestions/ideas in case they might stimulate others to come up with other ideas... we can get creative together.
Thanks for reading and thanks in advance for any replies.
Kind regards
Bev
14 Jun, 2011
sadly billybob there have been an awful lot of questions similar to yours, if you put jimmyjames into the search box or look back through the last few days questions you will see an excellent answer from Bamboo
2 Mar, 2011