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laurenzo2610

Crepe Myrtle

laurenzo2610
10 years ago

Hello!

My neighbor has recently had to put her house on the market to move to a retirement home. She has the prettiest crepe myrtle tree in her front yard. For some nutty reason the real estate agent wants to chop the thing down. It's at least 35 years old so I would never try to dig it up, but does anyone know if it's possible to grow another from cuttings off of it? And if you can, what is the best way to go about that?

Thanks!

Comments (7)

  • surfbreeze
    10 years ago

    I've successfully rooted small suckers which come up at he base of the tree which became beautiful trees on their on with just a little rooting hormone. Get some semi-hardwood cuttings with several nodes and place them in a good rooting mixture in a pot; keep them in the shade and mist them periodically and you should have some roots in 3 or 4 weeks. If you are lucky, some of the suckers will already have roots if you dig them up carefully. Good luck!

  • plantmaven
    10 years ago

    I once had my dh transplant one that we had too close to the house. The next year it came back from a small piece of root that was left in the ground. I would get the soil really wet a few feet from the trunk and see if I could dig up a piece of the root.
    I have heard of nurseries paying for large specimen plants and they come and dig it up. The realtor needs to know that chopping it down won't solve any problem and that it will keep coming back from the roots.
    When I bought this house there was a gnarly short one here that looked like someone kept running into it with a mower or some thing. After one season of pampering It, I realized it was very prone to mildew and was really ugly. I cut it down/ back to the ground, used roundup and covered it with a large piece of stone., That was in 2009 and this spring a shoot came up.

  • GreatPlains1
    10 years ago

    I would find this crazy making. Why is the realtor, of all people, cutting it down, did they give a reason? Anyone who has ever taken one out knows they will end up with a lot of nuisance sprouts endlessly coming up from the remaining roots and from the sounds of it, those roots will be growing a long distance away from the plant. This person is creating a problem. Taking out an ugly one is one thing but this sounds inexplicable from what you are describing unless maybe there is a buyer who is wanting the house if its chopped down? It makes me wonder if they even plan to dig out the stump.

    If its close enough to your yard, you may end up with a lot of them. I hope not.

  • daninthedirt (USDA 9a, HZ9, CentTX, Sunset z30, Cfa)
    10 years ago

    I dug up a sprout last fall from a nice crepe myrtle with the intention of transplanting it. The sprout was a good foot away from the tree. I did that, sunk it in the ground at another site with reasonably good soil, and waited. The sprout died and turned into a stick. I planted a tomato there later, without bothering to remove the stick. So here I am in the summer with a BIG tomato plant and a very healthy looking crepe myrtle peeking out from under it. In fact, new leaves just came out of the "dead" stick. So don't give up.

    Now, that's not exactly a "cutting" but it suggests that a cutting should work. In fact, one can read instructions for doing so all over the place. Six inches of new growth in spring or summer stuck in potting mix with some rooting hormone. Takes a few months to root.

  • Splendor
    10 years ago

    Well this thread is giving me some insight as to why a crepe myrtle has just popped up in the bed smack in front of my house!!! Been in my house about 1 year. I'm thinking the previous owner tried to get rid of it for similar reasons.....but here it is again....and blooming!

  • plantmaven
    10 years ago

    LOL ! I was out back pulling up an over abundance of feverfew plants. I turned around to pull a weed. Except it was a 3" shoot of that poor red crepe myrtle. Poor thing if it is trying this hard to live, I guess I will let it.
    BTW I have a dwarf (?) pinkish white one in my front flower bed. I think a bird planted it, as that area was all grass when I bought the house in 2007.

  • alameda/zone 8/East Texas
    10 years ago

    I have 2 large Natchez crepe myrtles in my backyard - close by, behind a fence where my greenhouse is, there are several sprouts coming up - one I dug up some years ago and it is now a pretty weeping pink. I am digging the rest of these out, putting in pots and planting elsewhere on the property. They are really tough - sprouts transplant well if you can find some. They are tenecious though......stumps are hard to burn, and they are difficult to kill. Kept trimmed, they are lovely.

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