Here are some photos of a tree (or is it trees) I saw earlier today.
Not only does it look like there’s one type of tree growing out of another, but one seems completely on top of the other.
As far as I could tell there is only one trunk (the pics don’t show this very well).
I know seeds will take root in a decaying tree and I suppose perhaps also a living one. But the stacking seen in these pictures seems truly bizarre.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/189248065@N03/?
Thanks
Unless they’re tricks based on where the photo is taken, they could be grafts of one type of tree on another. A recent extreme example
The trunks of the two different trees may be fused at the base, then some creative hortisculpture to enhance the look.
Most likely, the second tree was grafted onto the first.
Thanks for your answers.
It just occurred to me to contact the cemetery where I saw the tree and ask them to enlighten me. I will post their response if they get back to me.
BTW, Mount Pleasant Cemetery in Toronto is said to be famous for its trees. Here is a brochure illustrating some of them in case anyone is interested. It’s impressive.
If that was the Mad Grafter at work, an arrest warrant should be issued.
The conifer was almost certainly grafted but the effect may not be intentional. Grafted trees can revert to their root stock and what we see could be the ornamental conifer reverting to a standard blue spruce from the root system. It doesn’t look as though the conifers past the weird one share the same crown so I’m guessing this was the case. The cemetery might have left it because they thought the look was unusual or else just never got around to replacing it.
Looks to me that the lower part has been clipped and maintained with trimmers, and the top part is out of reach, and yes you can get quite different looking parts of a tree or bush when you do that.
A few years ago I lived just a couple of blocks up the street from Mount Pleasant. It was a very nice place to go for a walk but I had no idea about the trees.
This was my first guess. I suspect someone grafted the tidy little round one onto an ordinary rootstock – common enough. But a shoot from the common tree grew from below the graft, and (likely because the gardener missed it at first) it grew up past the grafted part, and took off.
That’s what “reverting to rootstock” means – not that the grafted part changes, but that a shoot from below the graft out-competes the grafted part.
I saw something like that near where I live. There was an ornamental weeping cherry. Those are created by growing an ordinary cherry to the height where you want it to start “weeping”, and then grafting the weeping part up there. But in this tree, a shoot of the rootstock sprouted just below the graft and grew straight up, because that’s what ordinary trees do. In the spring, you could see that it had fewer, smaller flowers, too, because it was selected for “grows a straight trunk quickly”, not for “pretty flowers”.
Of course, the shoot from the rootstock grew much faster than the grafted part, both because grafts usually have minor incompatibilities restricting the flow of nutrients (which this didn’t have, of course) and also just because it was higher and shaded the rest. After a few years it was nearly half of the tree.
I considered knocking on their door to explain to them what was wrong with their tree, but felt weird knocking on a stranger’s door, so I didn’t.
After about 6 or 8 years, someone cut off the non-weeping part. I assume they finally asked a horticulturalist what was going on. The tree still has a weird scar from where they cut down such a large branch, and I still feel a little bad I didn’t tell them in year 1 or 2, when it would have been easy to fix.
Also, that article says grafting has been done for hundreds of years. Try thousands. We have instructions on grafting from Roman authors, probable references to grafted grapes in the Bible and unambiguous references in the Talmud (including which grafts are kosher which are not allowed), and discussions of grafting in Chinese texts all dating back a couple of millennia. There are possible references to grafting in China that date back another thousand years BCE.
The cemetery arborist got back to me (and quickly!).
Here’s what he said:
You’re right in your assumption that this is just one tree. This was planted as a Dwarf Alberta Spruce, which is a cultivar of a White Spruce. In the early 1900s, a botanist from Harvard noticed a White Spruce seedling while travelling in Alberta that had naturally deformed/mutated into a different structure and that had compact, “fluffier” needles. I’ll try not to go overboard with the details but this natural plant deformity is called a Witch’s Broom.
They used cuttings from that deformed White Spruce to create this new variety of Dwarf Alberta Spruce, which is now one of the most common landscape plants. But because it originates from a genetic anomaly, they will occasionally revert back to their natural White Spruce tree form after a few years, which is what’s happening with this individual. Last I checked, the research into why the reversion happens was inconclusive but shade seemed to be biggest factor. I believe it’s about 5% of Dwarf Alberta Spruce that end up reverting so you’ll probably notice more of them around.
So, if I’ve understood correctly, it seems that this may be a sort of ‘throwback’ or ‘atavistic’ phenomenon.
Then we were neighbours!
I was basically at Bayview and Davisville. I live in the Upper Beaches now.
Isn’t that something. I am in south Leaside (around Sutherland and Rolph).
One good thing about this pandemic is that it’s caused me to explore the cemetery. I used to walk by without taking much notice. But since it reopened last month, I have really started to appreciate what an amazing space it is.
That is a dwarf Alberta spruce that has reverted to regular white spruce. They do this from occasionally. Dwarf Alberta spruces are grown from cuttings, not grafting. I recently removed one from next to my house that had reverted. I worked at a nursery for seven seasons and sold loads of them.
You can get more info here: Understanding tree reversions - MSU Extension
Indeed. And, thanks for that link. Before I posted the OP I had searched for the answer but didn’t use the right terms apparently.
Oh, cool. Yeah, the dwarf tree probably has just one “damaged” gene that leads to the small growth habit. And in one cell, that gene mutated back to the “normal” version, and that cell generated the whole big part of the tree.
Absolutely mystifying.