Royal Empress Trees - an Update

I seem to get several people that still follow along with my royal empress tree section of my blog. I had someone post tonight that they'd like an update, and ironically, I took photos just a couple days ago to do just that.

But first, I'll catch everyone else up. Royal Empress Trees are claimed to be fast growers that will grow "up to 20 feet the first year". We live in a place that doesn't have many trees, and not many LARGE trees, so I thought I'd give it a shot.

Because I was having a hard time finding real life photos on the internet, I decided to start a section of my blog. If you want to see the tree's progress, click here, or click on any "royal empress" label on any tree post.

Back in April, it was just a stick in the ground, so I did as they said and wacked it off right to the ground. Shortly, some little buds starting showing up. That was mid-april or so. In Mid-May, the tree looked like this:

12" in about a month. This was also around the time that the second of 3 trees total randomly died. You'll remember that the 3rd tree never came back after winter.

No idea what happened to the second tree. Just one day the leaves turned brown and it died. My best guess is too much water since our spring was VERY wet again this year.


A couple days ago, I went back out and took these photos:

You can't really tell, but this tree is about as tall as me, and I am 5'4". Around early August it really started to shoot up. Most of it was done over one week.

Here you can really see how large the leaves get. They are 3-4 hands across in width.

I don't know for sure if it will get any larger, but I will say I wish it would have grown more. This might be partly my own fault as they say when it grows, you need to break off all buds but one. I thought I had done that, but it was pretty good sized before I realized there were two. I didn't see it because the leaves are so big!

I did use a fertilizer stake on it at the beginning of the season.

This is the second full season I've had with experience with it, and I really was hoping for "more".

On a scale of 1-10 - 1 being a failure and 10 being better than they said, I will give it a solid 5. It's cool, it does grow fast, but so far it looks like a sunflower with no flower... not really a tree. It is supposed to be flowering, and the pics they show online look very much like a tree and not a "plant". I'm willing to give it time to see what happens yet.

Ironically, I've finally decided how I want my someday garage to sit on the property... I'm excited and hoping that construction will start next summer. *however* There's one sacrifice that'll have to be made.

Yep.. this tree.
Sigh.