I purchased a mail order Tulip Tree in 2013 from TyTy, and later purchased a 30 gallon one from Brazos Bend Tree Farm.
The 30 gallon tree looked very healthy throughout 2013, and even produce a couple of beautiful yellow flowers in the spring. In 2014 several of the branches produced only small puny leaves and eventually died (I pruned these off in the winter). I removed the stakes in the spring of 2014, but a slight gust of wind would make it swivel in its socket so I replaced the stakes again. In the spring of 2015, it was looking reasonable, but a few of the branches were producing puny leaves (see the highest central branch in the picture below).
Then, in the spring of 2015, I went on a 10 day vacation. When I returned from vacation, almost all the leaves had turned yellow, which would have been normal if it was autumn, but not a great sign in spring.
Soon after that, all the leaves dropped off. I removed the stakes and could simply push the tree over by hand to uproot it. In 3 years the roots had not expanded beyond the original root-ball.
In my opinion, the clay soil in my yard is just not acceptable for a Tulip Tree (in fact I have never seen another one growing in this area). On top of this, the soil in that part of my yard was waterlogged for about a month in the spring of 2015 which probably dealt the final blow. By the way, we also returned from that same vacation in spring 2015 to find our Eastern Redbud (close to the tulip tree) had completely died - when we left, the leaves were plentiful, large and dark green, and when we returned 10 days later, they were all completely brown - the Eastern Redbud cannot tolerate waterlogged soil either.
In the meantime, the mail-order Tulip Tree from TyTy, planted in a slightly higher area of the yard, struggled on and was still alive in 2016. The soil is slightly more sandy in this area of the yard, which should help, but nevertheless the tree did not grown much - a pitiful shadow of the magnificent gigantic specimens we saw in Great Smoky Mountains National Park when we visited in the spring of 2016. On September 3rd 2016 the mail-order tulip tree had lost all its leaves, presumably due to the brutal sun, but it sprouted an entire new crop of leaves after 12.6 inches of rain over the previous 3 weeks. In early May 2017, the mail-order Tulip Tree was looking very poor. One of the two main stems was completely dead, and the remainder of the tree was barely showing a few tiny leaves. However, there was an 8 inch tall sprout from the roots, and I waited to see if this amounted to anything.
On August 19th 2017 the tree was at the end of its life. The main stem had completely died, and the sprout, despite looking vigorous and healthy for a while and reaching about 2ft tall, had turned brown. I finally pulled up this tree in early September 2017 and was surprised to see that the roots had escaped the planting hole and spread fairly widely in 3 directions (see picture below). Nevertheless, I guess this clay soil is not well drained enough for a Tulip Tree to survive. When I snapped the roots, they were water-logged and smelled strongly of menthol - I wonder if that smell is an indication of a root disease of some kind. |
Tulip Tree (July 2017)
Tulip Tree - mail order (July 2016)
Tulip Tree - mail order (2013)
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