Someone vandalized my baby tree!!

I went to a Home and Garden show a few weeks ago with my mother and came home with 2 very small trees they were giving away (Mom gave me hers).  DH planted those and 3 bigger trees that weekend. The 3 bigger ones are in the back yard; but the 2 small ones we put along side our driveway.  They are Red Bud trees and not supposed to get too big.  Definitely not too big for the space.  Right now they are only about a foot tall.  Or were...  DH came in the other night and said it looks like someone snipped one in half!!  It's a pretty clean cut, at a bit of an angle. Could a rabbit do that!?  

I hate to accuse any neighbors and there rarely are kids in the area.  That tree was looking better than the other one too.  I'm kind of upset.  I love flowering trees and I was looking forward to having pink flowers in the spring.  When we moved in here we had to remove a bunch of dying/dead pine trees from that side of the property.  The neighbor on that side wasn't too happy because she liked the shade from them.  (But if they fell they'd take out her house!)  There was also a misunderstanding of the property line on her part. We were able to show her the surveys and she had a friend look over them and all was settled.  I was thinking she would be happy to see new things growing there too!  I just don't know what to think.  

DH said if it doesn't make it we can get bigger trees to plant there.  The guy on the other side of us works for a tree company and he thinks it may be ok and showed DH were to trim it near a bud so the bud will grow up.  It's just even tinier of a tree now!  We've got stakes around them so they don't accidentally get mowed over. 

I googled the tree, as I'm unfamiliar with it... it's so pretty!  And it's a native plant, will feed the birds and doesn't grow too big, so it seems unlikely someone has done it for any reasons associated with the tree itself.  But it does sound like foul play... animals aren't so neat.

I have some native plants out on the nature strip and once came out to find they had been hacked to pieces (it survived). It could easily just be a one-off stupid kid thing. 

Aw, I can see why you would be upset,   I love trees, too, and the little guy was just getting started. There's really no way to know what happened to it, maybe it was an accident or some wildlife, like you mentioned, there are no reasons to believe it was foul play (especially since the other tree is okay). You'll feel better soon, plant another tree, remember it was just a tree and give your children and your husband a big hug. 

Sucks if it was vandalism. People do some stupid random stuff sometimes. I hope it was just an accidental thing, but you'll probably never know. I remember a few years ago a member here had a bunch of fruit trees stolen. They were expensive too.
I had to Google the Red Bud tree, but I recognized it when I saw the pictures. Lovely tree. Those blossoms would brighten up your yard in Spring. We have quite a few around here and I love crunching the fallen pods in the Fall. Nice satisfying crunch.

We have a red bud in our front yard and they are pretty. It is possible that it was a rabbit. Or a deer. It will grow back, but it will branch out at that point and you'll have a bush instead of a tree. You could let it branch and then find another leader to the tree and prune back all of the other ones. I'm sorry that happened.

I remember the fruit trees being stolen. People can be nasty sometimes.

It should come back fine. :nod: I have a Redbud and it's a pretty big tree! At least it was until a wind storm took out half of it.

Thanks. I think we will watch it for a bit and see what it does. Maybe if it needs replacing we can get something in another shade of pink or white even to contrast the one that is ok.

It was probably a rabbit. I have a redbud tree and rabbits. They snap off coneflowers and black eyed susans often. Sometimes just to spite me. I have chase a rabbit around the back yard, and it has stopped to snap off a flower while on the run. Definitely not planning on eating it. :wife:

i planted Redbud that grew from a seed from the neighbors tree in the frontyard. it looked like a 15in long stick w/leaves. then it lost all it's leaves in fall and the lawn guy accidentially chopped the top 7 in off with the trimmer. now it is about 2ft tall with quite a few branches. they must be pretty hardy trees.

I went out shortly after I posted earlier and the other tree is damaged now.  Just one branch.  I'm going to keep a close eye on them.

goonie said:

i planted Redbud that grew from a seed from the neighbors tree in the frontyard. it looked like a 15in long stick w/leaves. then it lost all it's leaves in fall and the lawn guy accidentially chopped the top 7 in off with the trimmer. now it is about 2ft tall with quite a few branches. they must be pretty hardy trees.

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Oh good to know!  Thank you!  I watched 2 rabbits dart right under my backyard fence today too.  We seem to have a lot in the area this year.

I bet it was a rabbit or even a deer! I love Red bud's! They get to be fairly large trees - very pretty. I used to have to deal with deer eating my Spring flowers in our other home. It was so upsetting because they would eat my lily flowers.

Deer are a possibility.  I've never seen any directly in our  yards but there are plenty in the area.  I don't have any landscaping around the house.  We put lilacs in out front last year without this sort of damage.

Redbuds are a gorgeous tree; even the leaves are pretty (they're heart-shaped)  If the "cut" is at an angle, my bet would be a rabbit or squirrel.

You never know, though.  When one of my nieces bought her first house a couple of years ago, we bought a small red dogwood tree for her yard.  Within a week, someone had snapped it in two---a jagged snap, not a clean knife or bite wound.  Killed it dead.

That same niece bought another flowering tree a couple of weeks ago and now it's dead.  No wound, no cut, no snap, just dead.  She seems to think someone poisoned it.

As someone else said, a redbud will get to be pretty good size.  If you have it near your driveway, you might want to re-think placement.  It's not surprising (around here, anyway) for a redbud to grow to 20-25 feet across.

Good luck with your little twigs!

libby74 said:

As someone else said, a redbud will get to be pretty good size.  If you have it near your driveway, you might want to re-think placement.  It's not surprising (around here, anyway) for a redbud to grow to 20-25 feet across.

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Thank you I'll talk to DH again about that.  I think right now they are about 8-10' from the driveway and about 15' apart.  Maybe we ought to take the tape measure out to be sure.  They are about centered between the driveway and the neighbors property line.  I'd rather us try to move them now than when they get bit and the roots really spread!

You need to put a rabbit wire 'cage' around all of them. It sounds like deer. they eat things off like a shears. A rabbit could do it too, they can sit up on their hind legs and can reach a foot up. The cage would protect it from most anything.I would rake and water the ground around them to see what kind of prints are left, human or animal, then you'll know!