i have seen such also ... and mulled your quandary ....

i know if i did that type of trimming in my garden.. i would NEVER expect rebudding ...

perhaps it has something to do with the fact that its overly mature .... with a gargantuan root mass .... and removing half its canopy ... albeit.. on one side.... makes it do weird things ...

thats the best guess i can come up with ...

if i were the home owner.. i would have asked them to get rid of it in toto ...

ken

It wants revenge on those lines.

Thanks Ken... glad I'm not the only one perplexed by this... This is a house down the street, and every time I walk by I'm confused by all the growth.. I cannot find anything online to indicate the Blue Spruce can push new growth from old wood... Just don't understand... Maybe it is just due to the age & size... I can't even keep them alive, never mind sheering them and getting new growth!

Maybe the power company has been nibbling at it on and off for years, rather than cutting it all at once.
Mike

Hi Mike,

No, actually no one ever bothered with the tree until Spring 2013. That year the power company went nuts... they were going well beyond the 10ft in mark they are allowed to go. Not only that, but they made a hack out of every cut and dropped the branches down on whatever was below. They damaged a lot of my low growing, "power line approved" shrubs by dropping large oak tree branches down from about 50ft up... rant done, I understand they need to keep the lines clear.

But anyways... Attached is a google map shot of what the tree looked like before they hacked at it... they literally went down the side of the trunk with a chainsaw, cutting it back to the trunk from about 20ft up to 50ft or so... crazy... but that just makes all the new growth event more perplexing!

You are right about the new branches arising from dormant buds. In this case the buds are buried under the bark and their vascular traces, which go back to the primary xylem just outside the stem's pith, keep pace annually with the new growth. Common in blue spruce.