Bark interest trees and shrubs are much more effective visually with multiple stems.

Got it, but also much more effective when they are still alive. ;-)

Yes, well, kudos to you because I had just been googling to find pictures along the lines of "heck, what do they actually look like in their native haunts in China." Because that is really the heart of the matter, to me anyhow. If it's really 'supposed' to always grow with 3+ trunks, I guess I can accept that. OTOH I doubt that most of (generally speak) winter-dry China has hideous ice/wet slush events like I just had. And I've come to think that a lot of 'taken for granted' plant shapes, in my part of the USA at least, are just due to botanical gardens et al. being too lazy to properly maintain cutting and graft grown plants. (Yes, in this particular species, even the seedlings tend to do that. I bought a grafted form, 'Silver Ghost'.)

At the moment, mine looks like removing the sub-dominant leader wouldn't affect it or its overall appearance. So if I'm going to try to single trunk it, I better commit to going to that route now. The wiki shows a single stemmed one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Lacebark_pine_of_Susong-dong.jpg

http://www.usna.usda.gov/PhotoGallery/AnswerGallery/ImageAnswer_031606.html

Wow, have been to the National Arboretum a few times, was not aware of a "Lacebark Pine Meadow" LOL.

White Robe General.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:White_Robe_General_in_Tuancheng,_Beihai_Park.jpg

I see searching Bing Images for "bungeana" brings up a quite big one with a single stem that appears to be in a western collection somewhere. Clicking on it leads to Pinterest, I couldn't find any useful background information on the picture there. But I did get a page with Visit on it, clicked on that word and got an additionally close view.

There is an onlooker in the shot making it possible to see just how large and fine the tree is.

Otherwise it seems most shown by Bing are low forking, often in fact with multiple trunks that look disorganized or conflicting. But there is little sign of breakage.

"But there is little sign of breakage."

It could be they are less prone than various other hardwoods or softwoods. I think as a vague generality, slower growth = denser, stronger wood is a valid assumption. However at the end of the day a lever is a lever and the laws of physics are the laws of physics, if 1/2 the tree is weighted down with one force vector and 1/2 is weighted down with an opposing force vector, you are setting up a breakage scenario.

Here's a picture I took of a tree in an off-limits part of Longwood; I was shown this by an employee at the time. The area of trunk disfigurement makes me wonder if a low trunk or two snapped off at some point.

Here is a picture of nightmarish frozen goop that caused so much damage. Ice morphed to sleet which morphed to wet snow. All of it stuck which was the problem. This Abies firma laughed it off course. And this picture was over 24h after the precip had ended, after a lot of the somewhat lighter, snowier constituents had sublimated or blown off.

Mine is growing as a single stem and is 10' high at this point (started from seed). Unlike any other conifer I have ever seen around here (NE end of Lake Ontario), limbs weighed down with ice have stripped right off the tree. Fortunately, it hasn't happened often or the damage serious. Until it hit 4-5', the terminal bud had a tendency to fail over the winter (~2 of every 3 years) which required a lot of training but I infer might be the reason many are multi-stem. It has not happened again since it exceeded 5'.

Others I have seen are a mix of multi and single stem trees (located in Toronto, Niagara, & Ithaca). The multi stem trees all seemed to be short squat scrubby things...much smaller than you'd think they should be for their age. The single stem trees were nicer but still with the characteristic somewhat sparse foliage.

I agree w/smivies -- most often these seem sparsely foliaged. When I was at the National Arb yrs ago that was the case -- almost like they had some kind of pathology, or perhaps just a disagreement w/the climate there.

Some cultivated ones in web pictures are markedly denser. Maybe these are variants such as the one that became 'Rowe Arboretum'. Otherwise, yes, the beauty of the bark is matched only by the homeliness of the foliage. Such combinations recur throughout the garden plant world, for example orchids with their sometimes fantastic flowers in combination with very utilitarian looking plant bodies.

Thanks, we'll see.

My Bungeana has been thrashed by an elk and trashed by heavy snow. First the elk got it a couple of years ago and then the snow broke it this year where it was injured by the elk. This one is going to be moved to a more appropriate site with better drainage and less likely elk damage. (Closer to the house) It was growing too good for it's own health and was very vulnerable. I'm going to keep it pruned to lessen the snow load in the future with shorter branches. It's a sorry specimen now. Looking south.

Very thin, distorted branching shows that Mike's example was in way too much shade, making it thin and fragile. The leaning habit may have been due to shading, deformed roots or both.