Thanks, SusieQ for shrinking the bigger-than-I-expected picture. I've
been meaning to do it, but ...

Anyway, the victim is a dwarf blue spruce and suffered the damage during
a relatively mild Washington winter. One fellow gardener suggested
cutting off the dead top and training one of the side branches to be the
new leader. He then asked how many years I wanted to spend watching the
recovery process. I replied about no longer buying green bananas and he
said, "Dig it out and replace it."

So unless somebody wants to offer some better hope, I think I'll get out
the shovel.

Rob







:


"Suzie-Q" wrote after
"Bob Hobden" wrote
Just a suggestion if you want help, I presume you have split one
photo into
5 bits and posted those seperately so we have to spend time in the
reconstitution of your photo.
Why not just post one reduced size photo of about 500Kb that we can
all see
instantly. If you need to show some detail to aid diagnosis then cut
and expand that bit and post that as another separate photo.

Thanks for that Suzie-Q.

The tree is badly damaged, although I don't think it's dead, the top
and growing tip certainly are.
You could cut off the dead bits and see what happens, probably just
expand outwards, but it will never look like it should.
Personally I'd either dig it up and treat it as a Bonsai or bin it and
replace.