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| Desert Museum Palo Verde growing at an odd angle and developing an odd shape |
Q. I would like to ask your opinion on a Desert Museum
Palo Verde tree I planted in my front yard here in the Las Vegas area about 2
years ago. It looks like it is half of a
tree with most of its branches on the side sagging toward the ground. It is quite bent over and seems to be getting
worse over time. The yard’s terrain is
slanted, but other trees on similar topography don’t seem to have this
problem. Do you think it should be
staked, limbs removed, or whole tree removed?
from the house and does not look perfectly straight up as you’re picturing in
your mind it might become. Personally, I try to visualize what this tree might
look like as it gets older.
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| Picture the tree as it might look ten years from now. It looks strange now but adverse conditions can create character in plants. |
I find
that frequently a tree’s character is shaped by its environment and it tends to
grow in reaction to that environment. In other words your tree leaned and grew
in that direction because of its location and the impact from surrounding
plants and the environment.
picture this tree 10 years from now, with this leaning trunk and major scaffold
limbs pruned so they are not in the way, it might have a lot of character. This
character would be entirely different than the picture-perfect tree you
imagined when you bought it.
tend to let it go and as it gets larger remove or cut back limbs that might
damage the house and begin to remove the lower limbs if they interfere with
human or vehicle traffic. It will begin to straighten out in the next few
years. In my opinion, you have the beginning of a tree with quite a bit of
character.