Before you do anything drastic, the next time you are in downtown Wichita go south on Washington until it turns into Southeast Blvd. and observe the many Chinese pistache in the median. Many of them looked just like yours at first and the majority are doing just fine. They tend to grow crookedly and with many forks, but somehow develop a round overall shape as they mature.
hortster

That is what I would call a nursery cull. It is not acceptable for residental or commercial use.

So, hortster, do you remember those Chinese Pistache trees along Southeast Blvd when they were first planted in the median? How long ago was that?

Crop it. A one time topping 18 inches above the split. That's what growers do with them. They need a little training at that size.

A one time topping 18 inches above

===>> why not below the split.. and then select one of the shots as a dominant leader???

typo??

ken

If I have to cut this tree off at the main trunk then I am going to just remove the whole darn thing and replace it with another species of tree that is less of a pain in the butt, such as a bald cypress tree.

Two things. rhizo, respectfully, you haven't tried to GROW Chinese pistache in a nursery setting. They do not want to form a single leader. Ask others that GROW them in the ground. Our expert foreman tried and tried to prune them to a single leader and was stifled. It is very hard for me to think that that particular man, one of the best growers ever in this area, would fail. We are talking about hundreds of trees.
plantingman, those trees were planted about 15-20 years ago. Again, they were shipped in balled in burlap from Oklahoma nurseries but looked much like yours, many with multiple leaders. Check 'em out.
hortster

Thanks, hortster. I will do that.

If I have to cut this tree off at the main trunk then I am going to just remove the whole darn thing

==>> and you would learn what from that???

if you are willing to get rid of it..

why not get something else.. and plant it 10 feet away.. and learn something from this one..

your problem here.. and i think i told you this in some old post on this tree.. is that you went for some level of instant gratification.. buying a bigger one..

come to find out.. if you had bought one a year or two younger.. you could have pruned one side off.. and ended up with a better shaped tree..

or bought one properly pre-pruned ...

buying trees.. is not about instant gratification.. its all about buying the one that has the best POTENTIAL.. even if you have to wait a few years with a smaller one .. to catch up to a bigger one..

so when you go shopping.. for something else.. you now know.. because you had this experiment.. to look for a single dominant leader.. with good branch and crotch structure.. and that smaller trees are easier to handle.. easier to tranport.. plant.. and get established..

no matter what you paid for this tree.. you bought a lot of knowledge..

now.. if you accept the gauntlet i have throw down.. knowing there is a PROPER planting time for trees.. and it aint july/august ANYWHERE in the USA ... you have 2-3 months or so to figure out the replacement..

in the mean time.. go out there .... and whack that sucker off ... just about where those stake ties are.. but see if you can see any dormant buds.. little knobs in the trunk bark.. that might trigger.. if so.. advise.. and we might guide you here ...

after cutting it all off ... get rid of the stakes.. they will no longer be needed.. [and that itself is a lesson.. because had you bought a properly trained/sized tree.. in most soils.. it might never had need be staked anyway.. many 3 to 5 footers.. simply dont [in my sand anyway .. lets not discuss clay.. lol]] ..

and i will bet you a buck.. that by sept.. you will have 2 or 3 feet of growth from the cut.. probably with more than one leader ... at which time.. you will select 2 or 3 of the best, and remove excess ... and leave the others for spring.. and then.. in summer or so. select down to one..

the exciting part .... is the experiment.. and the knowledge learned..

and you will find.. that you did NOT waste money on this plant..

sometimes i scare myself.. when i wax poetic.. about an inanimate object.. like a tree .. lol ..

ken

ps: i have never seen.. nor grown one of these .. and if these general rules on tree growth .... do NOT work on CP ... then i would defer to them ...

pps: or just get rid of it.. because it pisses you off too much.. that is a lesson also.. lol ...

ken, I am telling you, Chinese pistache do not grow like many other trees. If you google image them, you will see pictures of severely staked trees in containers. The reason they stake them is that the pistache DO NOT WANT TO FORM A SINGLE LEADER or grow straight. The branching grows crookedly.
Please, someone that is reading this forum and grows Chinese pistache, chime in. I stand to be corrected!
I speak only from my exprience, but it is pretty ingrained! Years of watching are my reason for this position.
And, not to start another discussion but might, Chinese pistache in this area are beginning to invade and pop up as seedlings in around here. Each year I remove several from my beds. Hey, maybe the birds like my yard... The closest one (female) is at least two blocks from here.
hortster

I am well aware that Pistache trees have a long gangly and gawky period that they just can't help. Much like a 10 to 17 year old specimen of the human species. And quite often, they turn from an ugly duckling into a lovely swan, seemingly overnight. (Yipes, I've changed species in mid-analogy!)

THIS particular tree, in this particular yard, looks particularly terrible, however. I'd be tempted treat it like a wish bone and snap it apart on Thanksgiving.

About the invasive issue...I've been noting comments about that in recent years. I hate to see it happen, because it is such a good drought resistant species. Makes for some nice light shade and stunning color in a hot and dry parking lot island. We liked to use them in the deep South because we didn't have an awfully lot of choices for vivid fall color.

I gotta back horster on this one. P. chinensis is a very common street tree here and they look like hell when they are young, a la the OP's photo. They do get way better. Yes, rhizo, this is not a pretty specimen, but I think it is up to the OP to decide how committed he is to this particular tree. (and btw you changed not only species but genus, family and class, order, phylum, division and kingdom!)

Regarding invasiveness, P. chinensis is dioecious - get a male tree and you will not have to worry about invasiveness. Unless, of course, there is a female near by...sex being what it is...

i hear ya horster ...

you are correct.. i have no experience in this particular tree ..

he said he is willing to kill it ..

all i am saying.. is play with it.. learn something new ..

if it works.. whatever it is.. he learns something .. and then kills it.. lol ...

if it doesnt work.. he learns something.. and then he kills it.. lol ...

no need to simply chuck it in the burn pile.. w/o learning something ...

i had a redbud.. that refused all attempts at structure... actually dad bought it for me.. for my first house ... and they also .... dont like to conform to the tree norm ..

so he came over.. once a year.. and chopped it to a straight trunk ... and then kept coming back all summer.. and messing with it ... and i swear he chopped it to the ground 3 years running ...

i really didnt care what he did with his tree.. as mom brought her bachelor son left over dinner, when they came over.. lol ...

and eventually.. he got what he wanted out of it.. and i got fed 'mom's cookin' .... and we left a 20 foot beautifully formed redbud.. when i moved out 10 years later ...

what did i know.. i though he was nuts.. but he was having fun.. learning ...

ken

ps: if you do cut to straight trunk.. the cut is not flat.. its at a 45 degree angle.. with.. if you can find one.. a bud within about a half inch of the top edge ... this sheds water.. and will allow for healing when the trunk grows to many more inches thick ...

It's still a darned shame that this tree was not given a couple of snips when it was very young. It would have taken all of three seconds at the nursery. Plantingman, it wouldn't take much longer than that for you to vastly improve your tree.

Anyway, speaking of male hybrids.....how many named male clones are on the market? I can only find (in a very brief search) reference to one, Keith Daveys. It's been a long time since I specified C. pistache for a project; I'm pretty sure that seedling stock was the only option.

Virtually all of them spec'ed around here are 'Keith Davey'. There are hundreds in this county and every once in a while you see a female, but it's pretty rare. This tree has phenomenal fall color and is generally well behaved the rest of the time (doesn't have invasive roots, etc) so is on the list of street trees for a number of the cities.

And yeah, it should have been snipped and I would likely reduce that long branch on the right. I'd also modify the staking to three stakes with loose ties to allow for some movement to develop the trunk caliper.

Here is a link that might be useful: Pistacia chinensis

rhizo, it is quite true that the pistache is a highly drought resistant tree - in the median planting that I mentioned earlier the trees got water trucked to them for the first couple of years and nothing since. They are in a hot, dry and difficult location in the middle of a 4-lane, a narrow strip raised up by curbs on either side in sandy loam soil! Besides their unusually intense fall color their drought hardiness is why they have been used so much around here.
Unfortunately they were all seedling grown so many are females.
hortster

Ken, I am not really going to remove the tree or replace it with a bald cypress. I was being sarcastic, because I was just a little taken back by your suggestion to cut it off at the trunk. Perhaps if I had a bigger yard with more trees, then I would be willing to experiment and learn in that way. But I am not a grower or a horticulturist. I am just a guy trying to establish a medium sized shade tree in his small back yard. So, although I am not looking for instant gratification, I do want a shade tree that will look nice once it is mature. Besides, from what hortster is saying it sounds like cutting a Chinese Pistache tree off at the trunk would be a futile effort, which would not teach me anything new except that Chinese Pistache trees do not want to grow with a single dominant leader. And since that fact has already been thoroughly established from those who have already tried it on hundreds of CP trees, it would seem rather silly to try and do that myself. So, I am just going to leave it alone for several years and see how it does. If it grows into a beautiful tree then I would have learned to be patient and not worry so much about the things I plant.

Plantingman, patience is a virtue when it comes to trees. There is a saying that woody plants sleep, creep and then leap. Yours may sleep for a while but it will grow! You should be ok with your plan.

Make sure that it is not staked too tight - the tree needs to move with the breeze (without the root ball moving).

Good luck and have fun with it!

Thank you. I have it staked with panty hose. Everyone laughs whe I tell them that, but the panty hose is soft so it doesn't hurt the tree, and it is very flexible. The trunk of the tree moves with the slightest breeze, but in a strong wind the pantyhose helps the tree spring back to an upright position.

Update: Its now been four springs since I planted this Chinese Pistache tree. Although it still looks somewhat awkward, it is starting to shape up. One of those two branches has become the dominant trunk and that wide V is tightening up. This spring it just produced its first set of catkins. I am looking forward to what it will look like in four more years. Below are a couple of pics from two different views. (Sorry, they are not the best pics. They were taken with my low-end HTC smart phone.)

Nice.