Wow. That's a bit more extreme than the drawings. I would reject that one if the nursery will let you exchange it or give you your money back. I'm sure it will grow but if it's a retail nursery that offers such satisfaction warranties, I would try to exchange it on the grounds that you're not happy with it. It looks like it was "j-rooted" at the tree farm or some other planting/rooting issue what makes it a poor specimen if you paid top retail dollar for it.

I wouldn't hesitate to remove the soil. I don't have to look back at a single tree I planted here and wonder what might/could have root problems... because I washed the soil off everything and went in and fixed everything. All the great advice given here regarding trees planted too deeply and except myself and horster - for the hundreds of posts & everyone else is willing to skip the obvious. B&B is troublesome and we all know it. If it weren't for Adam's willingness to dig into the rootball to find signs of roots ~6" below and if he'd of just left it, that tree would have died. John, if a root-system is really screwed up and say has a long taproot with minimal fine roots, I'll pot it into soil-less mix and put it in mostly to full shade until it grows fine roots and in a larger container than normal. It may take three years until I'm happy/ready to plant it to the landscape. If I think after I've washed all the soil off and pruned the roots that it is good enough to be planted to the landscape, then yes I do stake it but I don't stake any tree so it can not sway in the wind. I usually put two metal fence stakes on opposite sides and wrap a towel around the trunk of the tree and use green, plastic, horticultural tape to tie the tree off. And I dig an immense hole and plant above the soil line and because of all the backfill, the tree will stay in place due to the sheer magnitude of the weight of the soil. That's all I have to say/comment upon. Dax

Thanks Dax! Wish I could take credit for it ;-) Hortster, you bring up a good very good point about where precisely rooting will take place. It does make me wonder if my potted tree was planted too deep after it was rooted or if the soil level could have actually been maintained as it was up potted (if it was even potted up since the roots on the flare could easily be traced all the way to the edge of the 2 gallon imprint). Two other thoughts: 1) I can't help but wonder if some of those roots on the "non-rooted" side could possible girdle the tree down the road. I have also seen some very nice pics of a tree (a deciduous magnolia) self root grafting. I think since it is actual root tissue down there, it should fuse if they ever press on each other. If it were actual trunk, then a SGR issue might well arise. 2) This thing was just about as good as it gets being potted stock originating from a large wholesale grower (Greenleaf). There were some roots that had begun to circle on the outside of the container but once teased out, they went straight and stayed that way. As some have stated in the past, this was fresh spring stock primed and ready to be planted. If this plant hung around in this 2 gallon pot all summer into fall growing roots in a circle, it would not have been quite so easy to straighten out and plant correctly. This post was edited by j0nd03 on Mon, Apr 7, 14 at 10:25

The two dimensional aspect of the photos makes illustrating a height more challenging, but it looks like you have the bottom of the root flare pretty well pinned down (assuming the marks were indicating a position on the side of the trunk as opposed to the front). The top of the root flare is a little higher than the upper marks (again, assuming you meant to indicate a position on the side). The root flare is the area at the bottom of the trunk, just above the roots, where there is a noticeable increase in taper. In the first picture, the top of the root flare (on the side) would be at the level in the picture corresponding to somewhere around the 4" mark on the ruler. At the front side, where your ruler is, it appears the root flare is just slightly above the higher red line. I hope this makes sense. It's pretty simple, but I'm having a harder time than I thought I would putting it into understandable words.