environmental factors. same situations here.

Dax

Here's a picture. It's somewhat distorted because of the angle, but you should get the idea. The new leader growth is about 7" long, and the rest of the tree is about 30" tall. The other buds just emerging are mishapen with sparse needles. This tree is not near any black walnuts, BTW.

My hypothesis would be that bud flushing is triggered by a particular temperature. Then if just one bud (the highest one, most in sunlight) reaches that temperature on a single hot day, but other buds don't, and the hot day is followed by a week of colder weather, then only that bud will flush until the next hotter spell.

This is just guesswork, though I have seen similar cases where a scattering of buds on a mature tree opened long before the rest in such circumstances (one hot day followed by a colder spell).

Resin

I have the same thing happening on a P. engelmannii 'Bush's Lace'. I just figured snowcover left the tip exposed to sun. The other buds are waking up now, so I'd say give it some more time.

tj

Thanks for the replies, these oddities are so interesting. I'll try to post an update at the end of the season.

I am observing the exact opposite here with some Abies and Pseudotsuga. The side shoots are mostly extended while the apical bud is just starting to break. I will go outside and get some pictures taken when we get a break from the brutal heat wave out there...

coniferophytus- I, too, had that on Abies Koreana & procera. My Pseudotsugas are just miniature globes so their bud break was pretty even.

tj

Tj - This is what I mean. The leader of this doug fir hasn't changed much since spring compared to the other shoots. Must be something wrong with it...

That Norway spruce transplant may be elongating its side shoots all that it can. In other words, the buds may be very underdeveloped compared to the terminal bud that formed last year. The leader is showing "luxuriant" growth, as they used to say. It has an unusually large number of needles that when they telescope apart are going to give you a helluva long leader for 2008. Further, its needles are unusually long. Did you by any chance favor it with water and fertilizer last summer and fall?

I haven't given this tree any, or any of the other NS transplants, any fertilizer. I generally water all transplants at the same time. This particular one is the only one in this part of the yard, so maybe soil has something to do with it? Here is a current picture. The leader is now 16" tall, and the side branch growth is very scrubby and short.

Wow! Nice 'lammas' growth. I've often seen Sitka Spruce show similar leader growth (pic below), but not on Norway Spruce before.

Resin

I have occasionally seen some spectacular lammas growth on my Norway spruce trees. Mostly on very young ones, but a very few times on trees 20 or 30 feet tall. A couple of times I have seen this growth with some nice side shoots coming out from it--4 or 5 inches in one or two cases. I don't have that many NS trees here in Winchester--not until the ones I planted this year--but I have never seen it here. Just at my Maryland mountain timberland site where there are usually very good summer rains.

--Spruce

That's not lammas growth. Lammas growth occurs in the early fall (as the Lammas holiday) when mild weather allows not-fully-dormant buds to grow out. In other words, the winter bud for next year elongates prematurely, and incompletely.
This is summer-shoot growth above the little laterals. The scenario is:
1. the hardened-off terminal from last year had a terminal bud.
2. the bud elongated to produce an abnormally long 2008 leader.
3. without a bud forming, the apex of that long leader spontaneously formed the summer shoot at its tip.
This little episode should end when the summer shoot fully elongates, and then forms a normal winter bud for the 2009 leader. Pretty intricate!

Pinetree:

Did you try to explain all of this to me once before? I am not sure, but I remember we had a discussion of the summer shoot growth on one of my very fast growing (a lot of growth each year) white pines. I thought it was some growth that developed from a new bud, like an oak tree that puts out a second flush of growth after the initial spring growth. And I think you explained that this growth with the pine tree was different--that it was a summer elongation of the base of the bud that would be the basis for the growth of the following years shoot. Do I remember right? And is this what is properly called "lammas" growth?

I think we also had some discussion of the "free growth" that I thought I saw on some NS trees after weevil attacks (maybe), and on some very young seedlings that seemed to put out new needles at the apex of their shoots without any evidence that I could see that it was an unfolding and extension of a shoot that came from any bud, whether that formed the previous summer/fall or had formed earlier in the summer. I can't remember exactly what you said about this kind of growth. I think you may have expressed some doubts about how I understood and/or described what I saw.

Now what I was trying to describe in the post above, and incorrectly calling "lammas shoots", and what gnome posted a picture of, seems to me to be something different from the "free growth" I am describing in the previous paragraph.

Now my question is, well, two things: first, is this growth that gnome pictures, and which I describe having seen on my own NS trees a few times, similar to what you described as happening with my special white pine tree (and a few others as well)--a premature extension of the basal elements of the terminal bud that would be the basis of the next year's growth, or is it something different? I think you are clearly saying it is something different. And if it is different, I think I understood from our previous discussion of white pine, that this kind of growth can't happen with white pine.

And my second question is: if it is different, could it also be different from what I am calling "free growth." It seems different to me in that the free growth I have observed, at least in young NS seedlings, is continuous with the initial shoot growth--there does not seem to be any stage where the growth seems to have stopped and then resumed. It is more like how a tuliptree grows, unfolding one leaf at a time, than how an oak tree grows when it sends out a new flush of growth from a new bud after the elements in the initial bud have fully extended themselves.

To summarize what I am trying to get at here--just how many kinds of, or sources of, summer growth are there, "technically" speaking? I am guessing there are three: Lammas shoots, free growth, and what gnome pictured and I described above--growth coming from the full extension of a new growth bud, like with an oak tree's second growth flush, followed by the formation of a completely new bud for the next year's growth.

Well, when I started this reply I had no intention of making it so long. Forgive me, but I have a streak of curiosity about such things, but at the same time don't want to make a pest of myself trying to delve into technical issues. Generally I am a man who hates "delving," in any of the metaphorical senses this term may have. I am happy to delve under the surface of the soil to plant a tree. But as for "delving," in the more general metaphorical sense, I know am best off when I remain satisfied with very superficial understandings of things. "Delving," if that means penetrating the surface to gain a deeper understanding, has proven to be a frightening activity for me and has generally lead to confusion. So I do my best, usually, to avoid it when I can.

--Spruce