in my sand .. i would hope they would eventually find their own path.. rather than circling forever ...

i might suspect that in say bad clay.. it might just keep going around in a circle ...

whats your soil type???

the easiest way to avoid this issue ... is to forego instant gratification ... and buy smaller specimens ... and/or buy them bare root ....

its the years and year in the pots.. to grow them to large size.. that is the problem ...

no opinion about field grown ...

ken

Ken, clay soil. Not super heavy.

Embothrium is right on target (as usual). I see soooo many people suggesting what Ken did (that roots will keep growing in circles), but I always wonder why they think that. I guess they are just repeating what they saw elsewhere.

Also, different types of trees may be better suited (inosculation, etc) to attempt to overcome this problem than others.

If something is found to be unrecoverable and expected to produce a large tree - if surviving to that point - it might be better to not plant it. Of course, they don't all automatically fail - sales of woody plants with deformed roots continues to be pandemic, with presumably most consumers still not being aware of the need to correct roots at planting time. So we are all surrounded by thousands of trees planted in a root-bound or otherwise structurally comprised condition, that grew anyway.

The Oak had shot a root straight out past the border of the original soil ball about a foot I noticed when pulling back the mulch, second season in the ground.

the better parts of nursery industry are trying to be aware of the problem and keep it under control...http://www.raemelton.com/bartletttreerese.html

I have no less than 3 trees I'm worried about on this front now, following the sickening demise of a roundleaf beech that was almost 10 years old. It had hardly grown...no more than 3'...but I attributed that to it just being a slow growing cultivar. Dug it up, sprayed the soil off with a hose for 'plant necroscopy' - and found it had a puny, highly knotted root system. The beech had had a huge B&B ball, it would have been incredibly difficult to discover the problem when I planted it. But most of what I plant, about 90%, is container grown. For years I would just pull away any circling roots from where the pot edge was. Now I realize you're almost better off thinking of most things as "bare root upon planting". You really need to see the whole root system. So far, almost everything has been ok with this new, more aggressive approach. Most serious 'boo-boo' involved a Rhododendron arboreum delavayi that had grown in a pot for years, and actually was starting to root through the drainage holes. Though rhodies have a reputation for fibrous roots, obviously a tree-like species has to start forming some tree-like roots at some point. Apparently that point is very early on! They were very twisted, and when I tried to untwist them, 2 of them snapped. They were more brittle than most roots. As it was about to get hot, maybe I should have put this off until fall. But that was too much physical damage and the plant started an immediate decline.

On the 'plants already in the ground for years front', I've already dug up a slow growing 'Dawyck Purple' and found it had the problem. I cut and even did a bit of sawing, to try to stop the circling...we will see if it survives this year with such aggressive fixing or not. There was a 'Dawyck Gold' I did this to about 4 or 5 years ago. It has started growing faster, but I wonder if I was aggressive enough back then....there still appears to be some minor knotting! I will post a pic later.

This site has good information reguarding this issue: Link

The Karpick Maple I dug up to correct was an impossible clump; I kept chopping away til almost nothing was left. Two years later no growth. This season it will start to do something after making roots I'm sure. But it really was garbage that showed in odd leaf growth and a stunted weird looking branch structure.

Regarding the Gillman article stuartlawrence linked to above I don't see how the box cutting technique he describes and shows is going to address the very common problem of root knots at stem bases due to plants spending too much time in narrow bands or liners at production facilities. Of course, when a shrub or tree turns out to have a turnip like or tightly braided root system there really isn't anything you can do about it...

I am skeptical too, although I think the rest of a the article is a good discussion of the issue.

I had a blue Lawson cypress that was about 20 ft tall when it blew over. The tightly bound rootball was partially exposed. The plant didn't die so I let it grow....as a hedge. That worked for a few years, but eventually the area became too shaded and the Lawson became worse looking than good.

I also have a Sequoiadendron giganteum that was given to me in a 20 gallon pot that was so rootbound I had to cut the pot to get the tree out. I planted it without doing anything to the rootball. I expected it to die. It languished for years before slowly recovering. At 50 ft. it's doing just fine now. Of course it would have done much better if I had worked over the rootball.

When I plant pot bound, i hack away at the circling roots. Planted hundreds of trees and never killed one!

Them being towering, massive trees that live for thousands of years in the wild redwoods are unusually well anchored, with supposedly none known to have blown over in the Great Gale that knocked down large numbers of long established trees in Britain some years back. So they are probably better at getting enough new roots past circles of pot-bound old ones to carry on adequately than most kinds of trees are. Although it seems Mike's example could still some day start strangling itself, unless there is a reason why that doesn't happen to these.