Why Isn’t My Redbud Tree Blooming?
You’ve picked a beautiful native tree with great four season interest, one of the main features being it’s spring flowers. Hot pink buds dotting the bare branches. The flowers showcase beautifully against the lime green of the new leaf growth in surrounding trees. Yet, your tree isn’t blooming!
I went through the same feeling of dread and doom after planting my Eastern Redbud (Cercis canadensis) sapling. In hindsight, my reaction is silly considering my knowledge of how plants function and yet, the answer didn’t come to me right away. In conversation with the Tattooed Gardener I was reminded of the basics of plants and why my tree didn’t wow me with blooms the first spring after planting. Even experienced gardeners get over zealous!
Why Isn’t My Eastern Redbud Tree Blooming?
An Eastern Redbud (Cercis canadensis) tree doesn’t bloom right away because it is still a baby. The new tree is spending resources on establishing itself, not producing flowers. If you have ever been pregnant you are aware of how exhausting creating a new life is. It requires a lot of energy and in an ideal setting, a strong supportive network around you. You are not born ready to reproduce and neither are trees.
Flowers may be what we appreciate in a plant, but those flowers are not present to please our eye. They are there to draw in pollinators. Flowers are the showy outfit to lure in a partner in the club-that-is-nature. Imagine if you left your parents, put on a sexy outfit, hooked up and made babies without having set up the basics like security housing and finances. You would be running a big risk to your own well-being and that of your offspring. Trees face a similar dilemma.
A seed drops and sprouts, forming a new tree. That tree needs to build up a root system, bark to protect itself, and enough leaves to ensure if can sustain itself. It does not immediately go about spending energy on flowers and procreation efforts because it is spending its energy building a foundation to sustain a long and healthy life.
When will my Eastern Redbud Tree Bloom?
Your redbud tree will often give you it’s first bloom three to five years after planting.
There are various factors that can change this time frame such as how old the sapling was when you planted it or how much stress the tree faces in it’s new location. You should see the first blooms within five years, and many purchased plants will bloom around the three year mark.
When I purchased my Eastern Redbud sapling it was three twigs, approximately two feet tall. It looked more like a leftover snowman arm then a tree, but that quickly changed. It grew quickly, and on it’s third spring when it was five and a half feet tall, it bloomed for the first time. Oh I could write a ballad about that bloom!
I finally figured out how to start redbud trees from seed and I’ve documented everything I learned in this article so you don’t have to waste the same time I did.
What other trees have delayed blooms?
Nearly every flowering and fruiting tree will face delayed blooms. The time to bloom varies, but many are upwards of 10 years. Examples of these are avocado’s that you grow from a pit, or an apple tree that you start from seed. Do not expect flowers or fruit from these projects for close to a decade.
How can I get a tree to bloom or produce fruit faster?
You don’t want to wait 10 years, and neither does the agricultural industry! The way to get a tree to bloom and bear fruit much sooner then the 10 year mark, is to graft a branch from an existing tree, onto a root stock. The details around this are for another article. This method not only gets you flowers and fruit drastically quicker, but it also creates ‘true to parent’ fruit.
Lets use humans as an example again. If someone has a baby, it will not be an exact copy of the parent. It will likely look very similar to one or both parents, and will even have a number of similar traits and characteristics. It may be much sweeter then the parent, or more lanky. Plants function in the same way. The seeds will have their own set of genetics that will be similar, but varied from the parent stock. Cloning by grafting ensures an exact replication and a ‘mature’ result.
