Rewilding My Lot

I planted a tiny Red Buckeye tree in April 2024. It had leaves when I planted it, but those leaves had all gone by July 2024. That did concern me, but then I learned that these trees tend to drop their leaves early, by mid to late summer. That made me hopeful that it would spend its time growing stronger underground to be ready for the following year.

I expected the Red Buckeye to show signs that something was happening in early spring 2025. However, as I was hearing of other trees nearby that were producing leaves and even blooms, mine was doing nothing.

I scraped off a little bark to check for greenness underneath, but I could only see brown.

So then I had a 12-inch stick in the ground with apparently no life. What to do? Even if I were to replace that tree, I wouldn’t do that until fall (the best time to plant trees here, where we have brutally hot summers), so really the best option was to leave it in place and just see what would happen.

To my amazement, a couple of weeks later I saw two little shoots at ground level, so apparently this brave tree is making a new start. Hopefully the root system now is stronger than it was a year ago so that it can be more resilient. It will be interesting to watch what is in effect a new seedling.