42" Single Leader. Leafed out. All leaves died out.....I expected it was a potential goner Scratch test looks good. The top 3 inches of the tip has signs of dieback. Currently it has re-leafed out about 1/3 of the way from the bottom. Next Season , do I leave this single leader alone. Wait till spring flush and just *top* the tree where there is the last leaf node. Or continue to leave it alone until I see a color change in the bark
I would wait and see. If the top is dead, it will turn blackish and then whitish. Simply being dead is nothing to worry about. It is just esthetically unappealing and horticultually the same thing as having been pruned. If the top has no buds, death of the top is inevitable, but it can sometimes be difficult to tell if there are buds or not. Conversely, it there are buds that aren't dry and brittle, the stem may still be alive. If it is due to an infection, the uppermost leaves will begin to wither and the blackish to whitish bark boundary in the bark will progress downward before fall, in which case, cut off the leader well below the boundary of healthy green to deathly blackish-whitish bark/stem. Discard the cutting and disinfect your pruning tool. Note that death, or die-back, usually progresses downward to a node (where a leaf pair exists) over winter and will stop there if there is no infection. Thus, if the blackish-whitish to green boundary progresses downward from thru a node, YIKES! it is infected. So, wait and see, it what I think you should do right now. That, and enjoy your little survivor in the meantime.
Yea I would say wait until it leafs out in the spring to see what you have left or if it even survives winter.
While there are signs of life, still not *rooted well in* Can't use the other truncatum I planted last year as a benchmark, but I vividly recall by October of same Growing, it was not budging when tried to -lift it-. The JM being discussed, I have tugged on it every now and then to check how rooted it is coming along....still easy to pull out if I wanted to
