Here it is. Can anyone guess what outline is in the background - hint - another large growing conifer.

Funny.... I just let my little conifers work out what they do until later. My healthy little Manchurian fir doesn't have a decided leader yet.

The background one might be larch.

Oh, if it wasn't clear...I haven't staked it. It's doing this on its own. What I'm impressed by is that the chemical signalling was able to force only 1 to stand up. I could better understand if both started angling up and would have a battle for the leader position.
Worth noting that the western Himalayas, mid-elevations, has some snow storms in winter, unlike the eastern mid-elevations. So perhaps A. pindrows have special adaptations to having their leaders broken.
Nope, not a larch.

If you're going to look like this, you better re-establish your leader quickly...could also be Cedrus, but both are native to the area and they are in competition after all.

Here is a link that might be useful: {{gwi:804948}}

This post was edited by davidrt28 on Sat, Sep 6, 14 at 12:10

Hmm, not larch. It almost looks Virginia pine-ish.

GardenWeb seems awfully slow to load recently. Glacial even. Me or is anyone else noticing it?

No, I don't notice slowness, but I do notice there's some URL trickery that (I'm guessing) somehow tries to reduce the load on their servers by causing your browser to use a cached copy.

For example, for this page I'm seeing this at the end:
msg0911005826475.html?32441

Sometimes I have to delete what's after "html" to force the page to load the most recent version.

i notised similar `erectionô at my picea abies cruenta. Bird sat on leader causing it to break, and vertical branch started turning up. Now after 2 years you can bearly notice the spot, trunk seems almost perfectly straight.

oh,i accidentally wrote vertical. What i ment was that horisontical branch started turning up to take itôs Place as a new leader.

Maybe this is standard for all Pinaceae and I just never noticed it before.
But I'm pretty sure I've seen other conifers, if they lose a leader, another one sprouts from a tiny bud.

If the lower shoots are pliable enough, they can become new leaders. Its currently happening on my Cupressus nootkatensis 'Green Arrow' which lost 8-12 inches off the top this past winter. The auxin from a leader affects horizontal growth on side shoots, not sure about how it affects geotropism, but something triggers this response.

tj

Thanks tsugajunkie.
BTW, the background is Sequoia semprevirens 'Soquel' - 40% burn from this winter almost no longer noticeable, and it still grew about 3'! Never been fertilized!

Hormone flow from the leader inhibits vertical growth of branches below.
Remove the leader and the inhibition is relaxed, mainly in the horizontal shoots closest below the leader.
The lateral branches will sweep upwards and eventually the strongest one will become the new leader.
But if the break occurs too far down the tree, the upsweeping branches will be unable to bend all that wood upwards.In that case you get a nicely curved branch eventually bending towards the tree's center of gravity, and then vertically.
Yes, branches can sprout from dormant buds below an injury, and in pines such buds can develop spontaneously from needle fascicles. If those sprouts appear right where a leader has broken off, they can grow vertically as leader replacements.