A&G&K&H wrote:
The wind in Brisbane knocked the top out of one of our ornamental flowering
gums (Corymbia ficifolia x onto a graft - market name is 'Eucalyptus Summer
Beauty') and I'm going to try and see if it can be repaired as the bark /
phloem is intact for about half the stem diameter.
So far, we've cut most of the leaf mass off the broken top, wrapped sticky
bandage around the break and wet a towel around the break and staked the
whole lot for support.
I'm hoping it may callus over as the break is about half-way up the 2m stem.

If it fails, I'll have to chop it back and let it reshoot, but its paired
with another flowering gum in the garden, so I'd like to try and heal it
first.

Any more ideas?
Amanda


G'day Amanda!

Exactly the same catastrophe happened to my E.cladocalyx nana (Dwarf
Sugar Gum) about twenty nine years ago. A massive storm broke the
sapling nearly in half and left only about a half of the stem intact.
Not only that, but a longitudinal split went up and down from the wound,
making it one that damaged about four inches of the main stem!

All I did was splint it with a couple of paddle-pop sticks and wrap it
in sticky tape. I was too demoralised to do much else (thought I'd lost
the tree, which had only been in the ground about a month and was
already about six inches taller than me).

Long story short, the tree grew and flourished and is now a fully-grown
beauty at my Mum's place. There's no longer any trace of the original
wound, but for a few years after the accident, there was a bit of a
callus and a lozenge-shaped scar. Of course, you'd be hard put to spot
it in the thick, nubbly bark of the adult tree, but I'd say go ahead and
repair yours - there's no reason it shouldn't flourish. I'd strongly
advise splinting the wound with one or more paddle-pop sticks against
the stem to support it as it heals. Use pantihose or something that's
not going to effectively ringbark the tree as it grows. Oh, and *leave
it alone* to let Nature do her job!

HTH,

--
Trish {|:-}
Newcastle, Australia