hairmetal - do you mind sharing the name of the nursery in Purcellville? BTW - went to Susanna Farms for the first time in donkey's years. OMG they are expensive. But being in MoCo like that, I can't really blame them. Charge what the market will bare. Oddly they had some wierd bargains that almost felt like they'd forgotten to add a 0 to a price. Unfortunately they were too big to fit in my car, like a nice Juniperus rigida pendula, that I think was only $79. It was huge. I really wanted to get something but just couldn't hold my nose tightly enough. I can understand pricing something like a showy Japanese maple high. But they had some little Trochodendrons that were no more than 20" high. Sure they are slow growing when small...but $120? Who's going to buy that? At that size they are about the most anonymous, bland, broad leaved evergreens imaginable. They look like scrounged up bunches of English Ivy. I maybe could have gone up to $65 out of the kindness of my heart, but, $120? Nope. But if they get rich suckers from Potomac to pay those prices, good for them. They do have a nice selection of what I'd call the standard upscale plants...which is getting harder and harder to find. For example also took a quick walk 'round Merrifield's Merrifield location (haha), was disappointed with their selection of similar stuff. If it's showy and marketable, like the Encore Azaleas, they make room for it. Otherwise, overall a more utilitarian, albeit slightly less expensive, selection. And still heavily pushing Leyland Cypresses which is a questionable business practice IMHO. This post was edited by davidrt28 on Wed, Oct 16, 13 at 23:46

I'm familiar with Phytolacca americana, American pokeberry, which is a herbaceous perennial plant that dies back to the ground every winter. Leaves and stems are mildly toxic... usually not browsed by grazing animals unless nothing else green is available. Early spring leaves and tender stems/shoots of P.americana are eaten as 'poke sallet'... usually cooked by boiling, discarding the first water, which will have leached out the majority of the phytolaccin toxin. Meh. Not a fan of poke sallet. Reminded me of spinach. Vastly inferior to collards, turnip or mustard greens. Suspect that any 'toxic' issues associated with P.dioica would be related to consumption of leaves or berries.

Basal sprouts/suckers and water sprouts have a significant impact on the top growth of whatever stem they're attached to. Juvenile tissues near the tree's root to shoot transition zone are naturally more vigorous than distal tissues, so the tree will tend to funnel energy to the juvenile parts while [ontogenetically] older tissues are deprived of what would have been funneled to them were it not for the juvenile growth closer to the transition zone. What you have going on also jars the eye because it looks so different from what would be considered one of the tree's 'features - the plaited trunk; so, there are two reasons to remove the low growth. The green to brown change in the periderm (bark) is a natural part of the plant's morphology. As the outer layers of the periderm die, they become cork-like; then, as the stems and branches thicken, the outermost dead parts of the periderm develop fissures and furrows to produced the aged look we envision when we think of 'bark'. Unless it contains supplemental nutrients, container media doesn't really undergo depletion of the nutrients locked in the hydrocarbon chains of which soil particles are comprised. To some degree, soil organisms break down tissues like cellulose more readily than some other tissue types, lignin, the part that makes trees woody and stems of more herbaceous plants stiff, for example; but this doesn't necessarily mean more available nutrients. If there are microorganisms breaking down soil particles, nutrients, especially N, can become reimmobilized within the very bodies of the soil life breaking down the nutrients. The increase in growth when a medium is changed is due more to an increase in media volume (in the case of potting up), or improvement in the medium's structure, specifically in the ratio of air:water held within the medias pores. Container media which hasn't been nutritionally amended is a poor source of nutrition, no matter how old it is. Even most container media that HAVE been precharged with nutrients contain such a small amount of nutrients that they too should be considered to be a poor source of nutrition. If you keep your focus on the physical structure of the media you use to at least the degree you can water your plants to beyond the point of total soil saturation w/o the need to be concerned the medium will remain soggy for an extended period (and result in poor root function/health), you'll have taken a very large step forward. Keeping your plants' root systems healthy is a prerequisite if you are to maintain your plants in a high state of vitality (health), so what you provide as a home for your plants' roots is no small matter in the overview of their care. If you decide to repot, timing is an important consideration. E.g., if you live in the northern hemisphere, repotting now is probably not a good idea. Where I live, in Michigan, I plan to repot my tropical trees just before to just after the summer solstice. A money tree would be repotted in May or early June. While timing might not be a life/death determining factor, working WITH the plant's natural rhythms is decidedly better than ignoring them. More on repotting if/when you have interest. Al

Cottonwoods and other species of Populus are known colonizers.....if you plant a single tree, in a short time you will have a mini forest! At one time, the largest and oldest known living organism was a grove of quaking aspens - close cousins to cottonwoods - that occupied 106 acres in south central Utah and was genetically determined to be a single plant with a root system over 80,000 years old. The maple should be a perfectly good substitute. Just be aware that any maple has an ability to produce a lot of surface root as they age but will not produce multiple root shoots or suckers like the Populus do. And the Utah extension service has published this listing of suitable shade trees to expand your choices: TreeBrowser.