If you've got collected material that's vigorously growing new shoots, can you remove redundant ones?

I know many will consider this topic heresy, "if it's newly-collected you don't touch it, however I've got a pair of BC's (taxodium distichum) I collected while dormant and they're both putting out tons of growth, however I've got some spots where there's 3+ shoots coming from the same spot on the trunk (not nearby each other, I mean their bases literally touch at the split in the bark they emerge from), the worst is a spot where there's *7* branches coming from 1 spot....

I'm looking at it and thinking I should remove the excessive shoots, not all at once as I wouldn't want to shock it but remove a redundant branch now, another in a few days, etc until there's no more spots on the tree where I've got >1 branch coming from the same spot on the trunk (again I mean literally same opening in the trunk, here's the worst spot, it's in the middle-left area of the pic that has 7 protruding from 1 hole in the bark, I wouldn't want to remove the branch that's ~1/2" to the right since it has a distinct branch-collar but those 7 that all burst through the same spot in the bark and have their collars touching each other, I can't help but thinking I should gradually remove the weaker ones until I just have 1 branch from that specific spot:


(Hmmmm......I wonder if that's not a blessing in disguise? I've only recently been trying to get into branch-grafting, perhaps it'd be smarter to let them all grow with the intention of fusing them later?)

Thanks for any thoughts on this!

Anyone who offers advice without seeing pics of the tree as collected (showing the roots) and pics of the tree now, is just guessing.

My guess. Remove max 20% of the stuff you are worried about ONLY IF it is going to harm the future image. If you can cut it off next year, leave it.

keep the ones in best angle, start removing the others. An extra here and there is welcome since you might snap some when styling.

I don't know why but I can't post pics, none of the methods work I'll do both in this post but they won't show-up!  Direct links to my taller and smaller BC's that are in-question here are, respectively, https://imgur.com/n1feroQ and https://imgur.com/RiRhLA0, those pics were taken this week

BrendanR wrote:Anyone who offers advice without seeing pics of the tree as collected (showing the roots) and pics of the tree now, is just guessing.

My guess.  Remove max 20% of the stuff you are worried about ONLY IF it is going to harm the future image.  If you can cut it off next year, leave it.

See I wasn't thinking to remove so much *but* then I read zack smith's article *here* that's showing a BC that's collected in feb (which is about as late as you can go in his/my area, we're pretty close geographically, relatively-speaking), and in the pictures taken in late-june (like right now) show a tree with 5 branches (the BC in the photo is sized in-between the two of mine, it's just a bit bigger than my smaller one)  However, I grew-out bushes, which off the bat is smart as I needed those 'solar panels' (lol) to grow-out a root-system, but I'd gotten that and had already just instinctively began clipping some of the clearly weaker branches but I fear I waited too-long to start really clipping branches intentionally, and even still I'm not even close to near 5 I've probably got 15+ branches on my large one and maybe 15 on my smaller, here's how they look now (the past several weeks I've been steadily removing shoots, am hoping to just go do an aggressive round and prune them down to maybe 5-7 branches apiece but not sure whether it's smarter to do that at once or wait, I can see benefits to both but based on zack's I feel I should be aiming more that way and that I've waited too-long already / let too-much sacrifice-material grow!)





Here^ should be two pictures, I've got the picture url's bracketed with img & /img front&back brackets, yet on the submitted post it's just blank lines...need to check my 'submitting pictures' help-thread here because this is real annoying!

[in-addition here are the url's to two 'progress albums' of them to give an idea how bushy I let them go, in order of the smaller one / the larger one the url's are here and here, any&all criticism is greatly appreciated these are my first two BC's (I collected several, had some failures and have one - a realllly nice one with a great knee - that's a weirdo, it took >3mo to pop and it's been like 5wks and the 2 buds that it popped are both under ~4", they look healthy but aren't even on the trunk they're off the buttressing!]

No idea why but if I try submitting images directly into the site, they appear like this:

Dirk Hoorelbeke wrote:keep the ones in best angle, start removing the others. An extra here and there is welcome since you might snap some when styling.

My prior post should have pics (am unsure if the pic errors are just on my end or not, am finding it impossible to get an image into a post here..), but one of my BC's is maybe 20", the other is closer to 3.75', both were allowed to bush-out (the smaller one bushed-out heavier but both have significant escape-roots in fact I've got a 2nd container of substrate under my smaller one's first container, for the escaped roots to grow-into)

I'm seeing pictures of a pro's BC in mid-june of the year he collected, and it's got 5 branches- I've been removing them slowly and was clearly too-slow, at this point I'd like to get to just several branches (maybe 5-7?) but am unsure if it's smarter to do it all at once, or just keep slowly removing them over time like I've been doing.....have already let far too-much resources get consumed obviously and want to remedy it by getting down to a proper branch# but don't want to risk shocking it if I go and remove 2/3 of its shoots, also don't want to waste months slowly removing them at the rate I'd been doing that's left me at this point of having far too-many for this stage!

If the prior post didn't show pics properly the direct links to picture url's of the two, smaller and larger respectively, are https://imgur.com/RiRhLA0 and https://imgur.com/n1feroQ

[for context of how bushy I let them get, their progress-albums in the same order: https://imgur.com/a/16mok and https://imgur.com/a/XWn6tOy ]

Keep in mind that when you look at pictures you only see part of the branches. Keep 15 or so , try to wire some now and see if they snap at the base, just to have a feeling how far you can go. If it works well you might wire them now and remove the rest. Keep bottom ones long.

Dirk Hoorelbeke wrote:Keep in mind that when you look at pictures you only see part of the branches. Keep 15 or so , try to wire some now and see if they snap at the base, just to have a feeling how far you can go. If it works well you might wire them now and remove the rest. Keep bottom ones long.

Sure, but it's pretty clear how much branching-length and foliage-mass is in that BC from Zack's blog that I'd linked...am actually having a conversation w/ him in-parallel on this subject (on BN) and just got the go-ahead for removing the extras, you say to keep 15- that's basically what I've got now, and while I'd had some confusion about rate of removal (and now think I've approached it wayyy too slowly!), I've had no question that those excess do need to go...they're just taking resources that could otherwise go to the keeper branches, they've already served their purpose so far as establishing my root-mass, at this point they're just taking resources & building larger collars (ie larger cut-scars), aren't they?

I will wire my keepers before doing any more clipping though, as I've never wired a BC before (just for context, how experienced are you with BC's?)

I've worked a few where I follow courses but I have none myself. Don't take my advice as expert advice. If you have someone with more experience and that have the results you are after, it is way better to follow their pointers. The extra branches do Rob energy but they also keep fueling the roots so by removing the few extras in fall instead of now Will leave options open and won't set you back to far. Better to have an extra branch than one short.

Dirk Hoorelbeke wrote:I've worked a few where I follow courses but I have none myself. Don't take my advice as expert advice. If you have someone with more experience and that have the results you are after, it is way better to follow their pointers. The extra branches do Rob energy but they also keep fueling the roots so by removing the few extras in fall instead of now Will leave options open and won't set you back to far. Better to have an extra branch than one short.

Thanks for the good reply, I think it *does* rob energy (inherently) as the remaining branches don't just double their growth rate, if you removed half the branches the remaining ones may grow 25% or 75% faster but most certainly not twice as fast....I've got really great roots on both of them (the big one has escape-roots along the entirety of the gapping in the wooden box, the smaller one has escape-roots that go into a 2nd oil-pan full of richer substrate) and know that BC's are the type of species where particular roots aren't 'connected' to particular foliage, so redirecting resources to the remaining branches is (or at least should certainly be) much smoother. I removed between 5-10 from each of them yesterday, putting them both around 10ish branches apiece, am now realizing that I'm late to the game on wiring (and pruning, I think- honestly it's my first year w/ BC's, I collected these 6mo ago) the keepers, going to have to take special care on this and having extra branches will be nice insurance against accidents in wiring, I still have a lot of those I've only been doing this for about(close-to) 2yrs..

I found this site very helpful too http://heartofdixiebonsai.com/tree-progressions/bald-cypress/bald-cypress-i