Well, IMO, there are a couple of things you can do to highlight your crApe's bark. First thing I'd do is select somewhere between 3 and 7 trunks. Having more trunks is too busy looking (at least to me) and tends to distract from each individual trunk (and therefore the bark). Also, by limiting the crape to fewer trunks, each trunk will grow somewhat larger, and do so a little quicker, than for multi-stemmed specimens. Larger trunks will display bark better. The other thing is to limb up the trunks, eliminating foliage on the lower 1/3 (or at least a few feet) of each trunk. Lower foliage blocks the view of the bark and makes crapes look more shrubbish than multi-trunked treeish. This post was edited by brandon7 on Mon, Feb 4, 13 at 20:43

You can, if you can access the trunks at ground level, take out one or more of the stems (up to a third of them for the next 3 years) at ground level, and let replacements grow up to a natural height. Keep taking out the old trunks until you have taken them all, and they are all now the natural height. If the topping has gone on for a number of years, then it will be hard to have a natural look with the old, topping-grown knuckles there. If you REALLY can't get at the old stems at ground level to take out individual trunks, which may well be the case, you have 2 choices - 1) take all the trunks down at ground level, let the new shoots grow up, selecting 3-7 of the stronger ones, and start over again. Or 2) take the knuckles off to where the stems are straight, select a very few of the resultant sprouts, and train them to grow up as a new canopy. The drawback to this is that there will be a noticeable difference where the cut was made, in the diameters of the trunk and branches. It would help to know the cultivar, so the probable height can be known. If it's one that grows to 30' or more, and there is room for only 20' or less, then you may have to take them out or move them to where there is room for them to grow, replacing them with more suitable cultivars. Rejuvenation pruning of a third of the stems annually will keep the height smaller, but you won't have the muscular-looking, peeling trunks, as those only develop with age, and you aren't letting the trunks age.

Joel, I slightly misread your post initially. Are you wanting to duplicate what you've seen, avoid it, or just know more about it? There are many many cultivars of both semi-red (dark pink to reddish purple) and white crapes. True reds are rarer. It would be hard to easily and positively identify many white or redish varieties. If the trees you are seeing are really red, they might be 'Arapaho' (usually upright), 'Cheyenne' (rounded), 'Whit II'/Dynamite (usually upright), 'Whit IV'/Red Rocket(usually upright), or 'Whit VII'/Siren Red. 'Whit V'/Tightwad is another true red selection, but has a dense half-circle dwarf mound habit. White crapes include 'Acoma', 'Alba', 'Whit VI'/Burgundy Cotton, 'Byer's Wonderful White', 'Dwarf Snow', 'Dwarf White', 'Glendora White', 'Natchez', 'New Snow', 'Petite Snow', 'Sarah's Favorite', etc. Here is a link that might be useful: Sample List of Many Crape Myrtle Varieties

Angie, Well at least manslaughter is not as serious as murder. Seriously, though, sometimes you just have to do what you have to do and I don't think y'all have harmed the crape myrtle at all. I would go ahead and cut out the dead trunk. I don't know that I'd say y'all went too far in your efforts to improve the health of your crape myrtle. It looks pretty good right now. The population of crape myrtle aphids usually peaks in late July and early August. Sometimes when the infestation is especially heavy, the lady bugs do have a hard time keeping up with all the aphids. I am glad you didn't spray anything that would hurt the lady bugs because they are incredibly beneficial. In the future, you can simply knock the apids off the plants with a sharp stream of water at high pressure. (You can use a hose nozzle or watering wand that has a high-pressure feature to do this. On my watering wand, there is a position called 'jet' that sprays a high-pressure stream of water when the want is set to that feature.) Sometimes you have to do it once or twice a day until you've done it enough to discourage them enough that they just move on. The honeydew from the aphids is not a problem in and off itself, but it can serve as a host for a black mold called sooty mold. It is unsightly and can cause defoliation when it is heavy, but the overall health of the tree is not harmed and new leaves will come out to replace any that fall off because of the sooty mold. There are several ways to deal with the aphids in the future so that you don't have a recurring issue with them every year. First, you can spray your crape myrtle with dormant oil during the dormant season in order to kill overwintering aphids. Then, in spring, check the undersides of your crape myrtle leaves in spring and spray them with insecticidal soap as soon as you notice aphids. If you can nip their population in the bud early, you usually can avoid having a major infestation of them. Having said that, since crape myrtle aphids only feed on crape myrtles, there always will be a population of them in your general area every summer, so keep checking the plants weekly and either hose off the aphids or use insecticidal soap on the undersides of the leaves. Once it is hot, though, you don't want to spray insecticidal soap on foliage because it can burn foliage of some plants in hot weather. Another alternative would be to buy and release lady bugs at the first sign of aphids on the plants in the spring. Lady bugs are kind of random and sometimes don't show up until the aphid population is huge. Sometimes I'll see them focusing on a specific pest on a specific type of plant when I'd rather have them on some other kind of plant eating its pests, but lady bugs don't take orders from humans. They don't even take requests. By buying them and releasing them on the crape myrtles when you see the aphid population appearing, you're ensuring the lady bugs are there while the population of aphids is small and more easy to wipe out. I am sure there are some broad-spectrum insecticides that would target the aphids, but I don't use broad-spectrum insecticides because they will kill all the beneficial insects too, so I am hoping you do not choose to spray with a broad-spectrum insecticide. About 97% of the insects we have in our yards and gardens are beneficial, and it would be a shame to kill them while trying to kill the 3% that are harmful. The aphid population will start dropping naturally in early to mid-August which is not that far away, so I'd just try to be patient and wait it out. I'm going to link my favorite Crape Myrtle website. It has great info in its FAQ and in its section on basic Crape Myrtle care. It also features a lot of great photos. If you're a lover of Crape Myrtles and you're ever traveling down to Dallas or points southward during Crape Myrtle season, it is well worth your while to visit McKinney for an hour or two just to see the incredible array of crape myrtles grown there. Whenever we are near McKinney in crape myrtle season, I make up an excuse to get off the highway and stop there just so we can enjoy the crape myrtles that are planted simply all over the place in McKinney. Sometimes when a plant has been topped (and this will sound drastic, but the CMs can survive it), the best way to restore its shape is to cut it back to the ground while it is dormant in winter or early spring. Then it will grow back in the shape that is natural for it. I did that with the 30-year-old crape myrtle on our property in Fort Worth because it appeared it had been topped repeatedly before we bought our house there. It regrew beautifully and the only pruning I ever had to do after that was just to remove the dead seedheads, damaged branches, branches that rubbed on one another, etc. I agree with your father-in-law that there's not much you can do to a crape myrtle that will permanently harm it. They are incredibly resilient plants. They fall in a category of great landscape plants that won't die and that you cannot kill easily (if at all). Well, extreme and exceptional drought did kill some crape myrtles in 2011, but I assume that is because they were not watered or not watered enough. Dawn Here is a link that might be useful: Crape Myrtle Trails