Hi Gerry, I didn't mean for my message to come off as an attack or aggressive towards your statements. It was just my take on what I thought what likely would happen if the pinching thing was done. Also, the habit that Dirr is describing isn't due to climate, it's do to varietal difference in the growing range. ie. if you plant a Southern single trunked tree like evergreen Sweetbay Magnolia up North(assuming it survives the climate) it will still try and grow as a larger tree like single trunked evergreen tree and the opposite is true. If you planted a Northern variety which is deciduous and grows as a small multi-stemmed large shrub or small tree in the deep South, it will still grow that way. I have a Northern variety which is about 15 years old now and still only about 10' tall by 8' wide and mostly deciduous, while a Southern variety I planted about 10 years ago is about 35' tall and 18' wide and evergreen. The original take on this was to assign 2 distinct varieties within Sweetbay Magnolia. The Southern evergreen, larger, single trunked tree version being labeled as Magnolia virginiana var. australis and the Northern deciduous, smaller, shrubby growing, multi-stemmed version being labeled as Magnolia virginiana var. virginiana. The problem with this is that you can often find both "varieties" growing together in the wild throughout much of the middle part of the native range and there are plenty of intermediate ones in the middle part of the range also. So, these "varieties" don't hold up too well in the classical taxonomic way for many.(Though many still recognize them) It would help a lot if the growers or originators of cultivars would specify which variety their cultivar is, or if it tends to be intermediate, etc. In many ways the 2 varieties are distinct enough to be like 2 different kinds of woody plants in the landscape(tree vs. large shrub). In much the same way Chinquapin Oak(Quercus muehlenbergii) and Dwarf Chinquapin Oak(Q. prinoides) are, with one being a 15' shrub and the other being a 60' tree. Well that's the long story. :-) Back to the OP, I was just sent a photo of another 'Moonglow'(I had asked them about theirs, because they got one from the originator of the cultivar before it was released to the public) which had 3 main trunks(all 3 were tall upright growing though), so it's possible. I believe they had planted theirs when it was very small and it's main trunk might of been slightly damaged, which induced the other 2 trunks to grow from near the ground.

Ah yes, Ken. That was me. (Here's the old thread.) Although it's more like .25 acres of what I own, even though my front yard opens out into the woods. I'm also the nutty guy trying to go all native with mini meadows, rain gardens, ponds, and the like (I'm getting there). Anyhow, I'm not in love with the sweetbay, and I'd just as soon get rid of it but my wife constantly reminds me I paid $180 for it last fall. Since I shouldn't expect anything glorious for a few years, why not move it one more time the front of the house and put something in there that I really like. That is the issue. I actually tagged a 3" cal black gum last year at the nursery and they just called me to tell me it's been dug out and do I still want it. I know people didn't like my placement of the black birch and how there would be 3 canopy trees in a 20' x 25' area, but I'm really, really thinking about going for it. I would put it where the sweetbay is now. Here's my backyard as of yesterday if anyone wants to weigh in: Again, I'm not looking for perfectly-formed trees here. My idea is the three of them to form a canopy. My greatest enjoyment is sitting on my patio and watching the birds and critters and I've always wanted a black gum. Thoughts?

I could understand that if it were protecting its burrows and maybe had young. Certainly it would consider a dog a potential predator and be defensive. I think any animal could be aggressive in those circumstances. I even provoked a possum once to aggression and that ain't easy. LOL. I took the original post to suggest the critter was not cornered in any way or provoked and still warned the human. Hard to tell the circumstances, most will do strange things if frightened. It does behoove people who confront out of the ordinary actions in any wild creature to protect themselves from bites. It ALWAYS means the death of the creature for testing, if you can catch it, or generally extremely expensive prophylaxis with rabies shots if you can't. It's why I always get my domestic pets (inside or out) vaccinated. Best to just leave wild critters unmolested and alone for their good and your own.

We had a sweet bay that volunteered in our yard in Wilmington NC. Within a a couple of years it was about 5 feet and producing flowers, When we left after 8 years it was 8 to 9 feet tall. As I said this was a volunteer so the cultivar was what ever naturally occur on that part of the Carolina coast. We loved the fragrance. Wished it produce a heavier canopy of leaves. It is not a big tree and will always be an understory tree. We had one that was on the lot when the house was built and was about 20 feet tall. One of the puzzles was its lack of leaves. One year we learned why. There was one old female squirrel who apparently like the smell of sweet bay leaves in her nest. Each time she had a litter, she would take as many leaves as she thought necessary to make her nest. This left the sweet bay nearly stripped of leaves near the end of the summer. This happened each year for the 8 years we lived in the house.