wrote in message
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Hi group,

We ordered two trees from a local landscaping company who also
installed them for us. We didn't know of the variety of these two
trees. We showed them pictures that we took of the trees we liked.
We were naive thinking that since they are the expert they would know
to select the right trees. The first one was a river birch with lots
of peeling barks. The one we got had a tag which says "river birch
triple clumps" and does not have much peeling barks. We googled
"river birch triple clumps" but couldn't find anything about it. The
second one was a kousa dogwood with 2"+ flowers/bracts. The tree that
was delivered to us has very tiny flowers like 1/2"

Any info you can give us regarding river birch triple clumps and/or
kousa dogwood with very small flower bracts? Thanks so much for your
help.


River Birch can be grown as a clump or single trunk. There are varietals,
some white barked, some bronze barked, some a mixture of the two. Often the
bark doesn't begin to peel in a pronounced manner until the tree matures,
you don't mention the size of yours but they can get quite large. I have
quite a few birch on my property, some are in pure stands and others are
loners. Some prefer to have their feet wet, other's will rot with excessive
moisture.

I don't presently have any dogwood but I've had them previously. I've found
dogwood can present many problems and they are not a particularly long lived
tree (perhaps 50 yrs) and are susceptible to many diseases and insect
damage. You can't make much judgement by the size of the dogwood blooms,
they vary greatly in size/quality from tree to tree, and year to year on the
same tree.

You'll have to have patience, trees develop very slowly... even though
nurseries make claims of fast growing, it's all relevant, birch is not
really a very fast growing tree... it tends to grow almost a foot a year
when very young (once a transplant becomes established) but its growth rate
will slow very substantially with maturity, some years it will actually lose
height and breadth as branches decay and fall, and of course trees require
some pruning.

Here is a nice specimen in front of my gardening shed; fall foliage Nov
2007:

http://i44.tinypic.com/nqs37n.jpg

http://i39.tinypic.com/2ajqi45.jpg

http://i42.tinypic.com/23tfol0.jpg

That same birch in May, in front of my shed, actually the garage with my
rental but I took it over as a gardening shed... that tree is not so
impressive as in fall... the uncut strip of lawn hides a small stream that
passes my vegetable garden and keeps it watered, that birch seems to like
wet:

http://i44.tinypic.com/2q16zwx.jpg


Anytime you want a specimen planting I strongly suggest you go to the
nursery and choose your own.