first.. its a conifer ....

second.. my plain old Green dawn redwood did this for its first 4 years.. rebudded and grew like a weed ...

third ... all 4 of my attempts at gold rush .. have died.. all were one gal tiny plants. ...

good luck

ken

Just to give you a little encouragement, my Gold Rush has proven to be very tough. I have not had your situation but a deer did a number on it year ago that would have killed most trees. It slowed it up for a couple of months but by the end of summer is was back to normal. David

Wow picea, that is encouraging. When the deer attacked your 'Gold Rush,' you must have been very strong to trustingly wait and see, instead of rushing to dig it up and started over. At least a month or so was fairly quick to be rewarded for your hope.

It has been so long since I have posted a photo, I have forgotten how and misplaced my instructions on an easy way to post photos. If someone can reply with some good instructions on how to do that, I will post a photo of my 'Gold Rush' in a couple of months, if mine also returns to normal and manages to even grow a little this spring.

Ken, I am sorry if my original post sounded like I thought the 'Gold Rush' was not a conifer. I guess since it drops its leaves and is bare over the winter, I tend to expect it to perform like other deciduous trees.

Also, what a discouragement, that even with 4 tries this cultivar still died for you. When my tree was shipped to me almost 2 years ago, it might have been in a 1 gallon size container, either that or just one size smaller pot: no longer quite sure of the exact details about that, now. What surprised me about the shipment was that the tree; though its trunk was very slender, it still was almost 5 feet tall with two main branches making-up the canopy.

Hopefully my 'Gold Rush' will continue to survive and maybe it will fairly soon become established enough that the trunk will begin to better thicken and the tree will grow at least 6 to 12 inches by the end of this year.

I have what I believe to be a 'gold rush' and have had it in since fall 2003. I say I believe it is a 'gold rush' because that is what it was sold as. But, I have my doubts. It has only grown about 6 inches each year since it has been in. I was told by a representative of the grower that they should grow the same as the species. The species can grow 1-3 feet a year.

My question to those of you who have had success with the 'gold rush' is how much yearly growth have you gotten? Also, do you have problems with the leaves turning brown during the heat of the summer? Does the branching pattern resemble that of the species or are they growing more densely. On my speices, I have a clean trunk for 3-4 feet and fairly spaced out branches. On my so-called 'gold rush' the branches are right to the ground and are very dense.

There is a dwarf Metasequoia glyptostroboides called 'Golden Dawn'. But, I have not found anyone in the nursery business that seem to have any knowledge of it.

I hope to come to some conclusion as to what mine is.

I forgot to ask Picea a question in my earlier post. Picea said the deer did a number on his 'gold rush'. What did they do? Did they eat the leaves all off or Scrap the branches and trunk with their horns?

Thanks.

Ken,

Was it winter kill that did all of them in? Did any of them survive their first winter? I just went out and checked on my 'Gold Rush' and the buds are looking good. It was about a 4' plant in 3-gal. container when I purchased last September. It is exposed to N/NW winds and I thought its chances were pretty slim of making it through winter.

Bob

Horseman, your question about the growth rate is similar to what I am wondering. My tree has not added any height at all since it was planted last year. Neither does the trunk seemed to have thicken enough for me to perceive, if at all.

If the late winter freeze issues had not distracted me, I would have been posting questions about the slow growth rate.

Yesterday, I read on a website describing the cultivar, that the 'Gold Rush' cultivar does grow slower than the species.

My 'Gold Rush' has a clean trunk about 3 feet up before the trunk forks of into two thin, flexible and arching, but still slightly branched and well leafed out trunks which makes up the canopy of the tree. It looks to me that the only reason the trunk is not branching out lower on the trunk is due to the way the grower pruned and trained the tree prior to shipping it to me.

I planted mine in mid May of last year, and yes in the heat and drought of the summer the leaves did tend to want to turn brown. Whenever I saw the slightest amount of browning in the leaves, I would water the tree well, and each time, the leaves responded quickly, by changing again to their nice bright healthy color.

Currently the leaves of my 'Gold Rush' look golden, and I can see some of the healthy bright green of the cultivar's normal spring leaf color trying to emerge from the base of those golden colored leaves.

Hi Hoseman,

They scraped the bark about 40-50% around the trunk about 18" above the ground. I have had that type of damage kill a red maple. Gold Rush responded by putting out new needles but no new growth with the exception of growth below the damage. A small branch from below the damage grew 30" and if the top of the tree had died I could have cut it off and used this new grow to from a new tree. Mid summer though it started to put some new growth.

As far as growth rare goes it has put on 15" per year which I thing is good for a yellow plant. One note, my plant is Grafted so I don't know if that makes a difference or not. I have also been told that the species likes water so it might be helpful to keep them well watered for the first couple of years. David

Mine has also been grafted, and I have no idea what the roots stock is.

Hopefully once it fully recovers from this spring's late freeze, it's roots will be developed enough for it to display it's average yearly growth pattern between now and next spring.

Since the trunk of the tree still has such a small diameter, I am wondering how long my 'Gold Rush' will need to be staked.

I checked my tree again, and found that at the ends the golden colored leaves are getting dry and crusty; while at their base, the healthy yellow green is emerging even more.

It seems the tree really must have tried to go dormant, but just prior to fully getting to that point it began again to break out of that effort.

The way the tree looked to be struggling to recover, I concluded it best to cut off one of the modified leader trunks in the canopy area. For the first time, upon inspection one of the trunks seemed to be more dominant and growing more unified out of the lower main leader trunk. From that conclusion I chose to cut the other modified leader back half way at first, while later going back to cut it completely off, at the trunk.

Now, I am hoping that the tree will have more energy to focus on the remaining canopy's main leader, and that it will be able to recover more quickly than it otherwise would have.

I don't know how cold it got where you live, but covering a plant will only protect it for about 5-6 degrees below it's normal limit and also for a brief period of time. I live in OH--we had very cold weather the same week that you did--down to about 18-24 for several nights--the needles on my Ogon froze and are now dropping, the tree should recover and send new needles--or at least I'm hoping it will. My tree is 4 years old (was grafted cutting when I got it)--it has grown very fast and is now about 15 feet tall, it's planted in a very moist area that never dries out. I have a species Dawn Redwood in a much drier area and it grows much slower--Dawn redwoods like to be moist and will actually grow in wet areas where other trees won't survive.

Wanda

Check it out here . . .

Here is a link that might be useful: How smart?

People assume that 'Ogon' will eventually reach a similar size to the species, just somewhat slower... is this just an overly optimistic assumption?

Can the tree really handle full sun in most situations?

Most of the 'Ogon' I've seen for sale look pretty darn crappy without the true central leader that you see on the species even on small normal Dawn Redwoods, maybe that is just because of the graft (so why don't they use cuttings?)