dawn redwood fused trunks progress

i thought i may have posted about this before, but couldnt find it... so i will call this a progress report rather than an update

anyways, for the past few years i have been working on fusing the trunks of 5 dawn redwoods that i originally obtained as seedlings... i am not really counting the first year as i really did not have them wrapped properly and they made zero movement toward fusing, so lets call this a 2 year progress report, with comments and suggestions welcome...

here it is before i unwrapped anything... quite the vigorous grower !
it is wrapped in floral tape and then tightly secured with the double sided velcro tape which holds really really well !
(thanks again david !)







and here are some shots after unwrapping... it appears that they are beginning to fuse, but that is somewhat deceptive...
while some of the areas seem to have fused, the rest have just simply grown really close together...







the next shots are just before and after some pruning
(perhaps needless to say, but at this stage, i am simply growing the trunk and am not concerned with branches)







because they seem to be stubborn, i decided to try a bit more of an aggressive approach  
figured i would carve a trough between each trunk in the hopes that the healing scars will blend with each other as they heal and swell...
i realize that may result in a fused exterior, but maybe not so much the interior,
but if successful on the exterior, the interior should resolve itself over time





and then here it is all wrapped up and ready to forget about for another year, while it (hopefully) does its thing...
(i skipped the floral tape this time)



i have a feeling this will take an extremely long time, if it works at all, but the material was cheap and the tree just gets buried in the garden (in the pot) over winter, so it is not in the way...

razzes & huzzahs welcome !

Very interazzting. Seems to work hooright.

Sorry, that's the kind of bad pun I'd make in my own language

I think it's going to be a success. Thanks for posting, I like this kind of experience. Have you thought of wiring it so as to make it "spiral" a bit? Maybe the trunks are too big...

thought about it and rejected it... the vertical fissures (for lack of a better term) which may develop will look more natural on these than a spiral scar running up the trunk.

I have some elms that as well are second season progress, last summer I thought they might have been fused but when I removed the wire the diddnt stay tight. So this year I wired em back up and won't remove the wire so the trees will grow around it and hopefully fuse. I have a bunch of other cuttings ready for next year and I think my new plan is to shave some bark to expose the cambium to one another, and get a faster fuse. Never considered the redwoods but I think I'll be picking up some seedlings

yeah man... the bark shave is probably the way to go for not only a faster fuse, but a stronger one...
and i have some curly willows that i have bound with wire a few years ago and the wire is almost swallowed up now, but still not completely fused... again, the bark shave would have expedited it...

the other thing i just read was to let them run without pruning for max energy...
whoops... too late for mine
oh well...

(btw - check my reply on the AAC blog)

Coming along nice.

I like the progress. One more year...
I remember that discussion, but couldn't find it either. Weren't you using raffia at the time? What ever the binder was, I was sure it would work...
I have been adding cuttings into my ficus fusion to close gaps between larger branches, so it may never be 'complete'.

david... i dont believe i used rafia, but i'm sure that would work...
regardless, that velcro product you turned me onto works perfect...

and good idea about adding cuttings !

if they "take" that would be a good way to thicken up a trunk with a quickness !

i'd be stoked to see some pics of yours.