My sister bought a weeping cherry tree from a nursery, and they told her all that she had to prune was the ends of the branches to keep them off the ground, The center of the tree has grown straight up about 15ft, but the sides are still weeping. She wants me to prune all the growth back down to the original tree. that will take over 50% of the tree. The central branches are around 4" in diameter and I would have to cut about 8ft off of them. I know that to slow down growth you should prune in the summer. My question is would this kill the tree it is very healthy now.
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I inherited a weeping cherry tree (30ft) so I’m also interested. From what I read:
- remove dead and damaged branches
- trim to about 1 foot above the ground
- trim anywhere for airflow / crossing as necessary
The advise I remember reading was trim in the winter when dormant, but I’m not sure.
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If you have a weeping ornamental cherry tree that has a very vertical branch, then that branch is a sucker and needs to be removed.
WP cherries are top worked or grafted onto a stem called a innerstem. It is usually at 5.5’ but can be any height. On cherries its often a Mazzard interstem, but can be others. Sometimes they are raised up from the ground bud, but they are not as common in the trade.
They graft the weeping tree at the top, as to get it up off the ground for the display. Anything below that graft union is a sucker and needs to be removed.
Prunus sub pendula, weeping Higan cherry is the most common tree out there.
Any of the crabapples and lilacs that have a lollipop look are generally done this way.
I see them often in landscapes but they aren’t a persistent problem like apples on M7. Once removed it may not resucker.
Has to come out or it will dominate the tree. I’ve seen where they end up being 90% of the trees top growth and when you remove the sucker people are shocked.
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Thanks for the information. all the upright growth is in the center of the tree, the weepng limbs are about 5’ above the ground in the center of tree. There aren’t any suckers below the weeping limbs. She likes the tree except that it is getting too high for her property and the upper growth isn’t weeping. I told her if I prune the upper growth off an it branches out new upright branches we would try to train them down.
You want to cut off any new upward regrowth while its small. The genetics in the graft is what makes it weep. Its not trained that way.
You need to cut it back to the main trunk. It may be very radical depending on how long its grown that way.
They dont make lots of suckers but when they do they can be rapid growing. Good luck
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I told her if it didn’t work I might be able to cut it low and graft a fruiting cherry on it. I doubt if it is dwarfing rootstock though but maybe keep it low enough by pruning it. I even thought of air layering it and planting that so she would have a weeping tree. When I cut the high growth off would it be better in the summer or wait till late winter when it is dormant.
If you are going to cut and graft it, you may just be able to graft on the original standard and remove the weeping grafted part altogether. Most are grafted on Mazzard cherry I believe.
I would remove it dormant and a little before or at gafting time.
If just removing the sucker I’d do it now.
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My sister just told me the part that is growing straight up they just grafted when she bought it and they told her that she would want it. I am going to call the nursery and find out what it is.