Dawn Redwood - Summer 2020 Update

It isn't super easy to glean from the photo above, but that is our Dawn Redwood tree that seems to be doing well - again - this Summer.  The last time I shared a photo of this tree was last Fall when it was starting to turn colors and was beginning to drop some needles.

This tree grew three feet of height last Summer and built out quite a bit of new branching, so I had been hoping that we'd see another good season.  And, so far?  It seems to be doing ok.  I've run a soaker hose on some of the plants in this bed, including this Dawn Redwood - to make sure that it gets enough water.

I left the spade shovel in the ground next to this tree - that's a five-foot-tall shovel and gives you a sense for the height of the tree as it stands now.  I'm NOT seeing a new three-foot-tall top on the tree right now, but there *is* some new growth on the leader (or...if you will... the apical meristem).  Below is a photo of the leader.  Can you see it?

Here's an annotated version of that same photo.

I have stopped measuring the heights of my nursery stock trees as they're starting to get too tall to make good measurements in exchange for using a caliper-approach.  In January of this year, this Dawn Redwood had a 1.46" caliper measurement 6" from the root flare.  That's the dimension that I'll be watching this Summer when I get out and measure all of the trees.