A picture will help, if just to confirm it is Picea orientalis 'Nigra Compacta'.

tj

once a conifer gets ESTABLISHED ... AND MIND YOU.. THIS IS W/O A PIC.. JUST GUESSING....

it will put out a relatively huge leader.. re-establishing it predictable annual growth rate ....

it will seem.. in spring.. that there is nothing there.. but perhaps its terminal buds ....

but by this time of summer .. you ought to be able to see next years lateral buds ...

i dont know the growth rate of compacta .... but if its supposed to be a few inches.. and yours put up a 2 foot leader.. that would make its ID questionable ...

get these dudes a pic of the needles .... and the plant as a whole.. hold your phone upright....

ken

How do I post more than one photo at a time? I'll post them separately. This is the best I could do with my camera.

THe first picture doesn't give a good sense of the spindly leader. It's about 8" while the whole tree is about 5'7". Could it be that it's struggling for sun so it's becoming etiolated? I will attach more pictures. I

#3
Thanks for answering my original post!

#4 showing just the leader.

I see several buds on the leader which will become laterals.

This species is known for looking a bit open at the top.

Your plant is perfect if you ask me given its leader, bud set and laterals.

By the way if you cut it back now it likely won't set new buds. You have to do this when the shoots are a bit tender yet in June.

What whaas said, and Ken said above. It will fill in where it seems bare now only to grow a new bare spot each year. I would trim nothing.

tj

Thanks everyone. I will definitely leave it alone. Last weekend I contemplated cutting the leader down but I really didn't want to because it looks so healthy. It's hard for me to trim plants when they're healthy.

leave it alone...

except for the fact that its about 10 feet too close to that garage.. and about 20 feet too close to the gorgeous blue spruce .....

go up to your plant... look at the needles on the trunk ... at the top ....

trace down ... and you will see where they change pattern .... and you now can compare this years growth ...... to last years growth ... and that should give you a pretty good indication of its future annual growth rate .....

if you track down further.. the needle pattern will change again .. and that will be 2 years back .. etc ...

if you study it hard enough .. you will see a year where it was very truncated... and that would have been the season after you planted it .... the year it spent getting re-established....

while you are tracking the 3 years... you should start to 'see' how it grows ...

do you have somewhere else to put a tree with that potential????... if you do.. move it in fall .... while you still can ...

ken

LOL ken, that garage is my house. I have too little yard for how many specimens I want/have. The blue spruce was planted there when I got the house. Way too close to the house. But it has grown a lot since 1998 and it's well behaved and stays away from hitting the house somehow.

I could move the little guy this fall further toward the front of my property. I will make sure I dig a huge rootball. It's one of my favorites. It struggled the first two years I had it but the 3rd year ( a few years back) it was bursting with health. Looked even healthier than now. I had put Hollytone on it. This year I had an ashleaf hydrangea that shaded it too much so now that I've cut that totally back the black oriental spruce should be happier. It is getting a little crowded by the snowball hydrangea though so I'll clip that back.

Thanks for all your advice! You've helped in prior years with my conifer collection. You are dead on with your reading of the orientalis spruce's life history.

let me know if you can SEE the growth patterns ....

i figured with the fence behind.. it was a garage..

man.. i grew up on a lot that size.. i am so glad i escaped... but now i wonder how the helk i am going to keep up 5 acres.. as i get more mature.. lol ...

ken

I will check out the growth pattern this weekend because I get home after work and it seems to be raining each night. That little fence is leftover from a dog run someone had. I left it there because the foliage covers that front piece. No fence anywhere else in front yard. I have a double lot but I do live in the suburbs. Love the house (Dutch colonial built in 1908) but wish I could move it out to the country.

I am trying to get my yard into a low maintenance mode before I get too old to maintain it. But I'm surprised about how many people in my neighborhood think I should prune all my conifers into cubes and balls (!). No way.

I am sure 'Nigra Compacta' is correct cultivar name.

This one believe to be about 20 years old 10 years in my garden.

Never any sign of a central leader.

4 ft. wide x 3 ft. tall.

Restricted to a diet of 3 hours of sun a day and seems happy as hell.

Never any issues.

Dave

{{gwi:781554}}

Update: I left it alone and it's filling in at the top this spring. Laterals growing out. New green growth all over covering the brown it got over this horrible winter we had. Not enough brown where I thought it was dead. just enough to make it less healthy but the green is quickly hiding the damage.

My blue spruce in the picture came through the winter without any visible harm. Another blue spruce I have that's about 5 feet tall looks the best it's ever looked with new buds all over. My blue junipers are healthy with some (few) pale brown needles here and there .