Why Your Weeping Cherry Tree No Longer Weeps

Why Your Weeping Cherry Tree No Longer Weeps

Weeping cherries are iconic. Those fountain-like sprays of magnificent blossoms are unlike anything else.

They seem like something straight out of our favorite fairytales and it’s little wonder they often feature in them.

I guess it shouldn’t come as a surprise, given their otherworldly beauty, that they don’t actually occur in nature.

That’s right – weeping cherries don’t naturally grow that way. They’re produced using grafting and judicious pruning. Then, they’re shipped off to the consumer to plant and enjoy.

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Sometimes, those weeping beauties decide that they want to grow upright.

You’ve probably seen them. The ones that have a few errant stems poking out the top that just don’t seem to fit in with the rest of the tree.

We’re going to go over why that happens and what you can do to fix it. Coming up, here’s what we’ll discuss:

Don’t worry, your beloved tree will be back to weeping in no time. To start with, let’s go into a bit more detail about how these trees are made.

And if you need a refresher on how to care for weeping cherries, check out our growing guide.

This is going to help us figure out how to handle the situation if we understand what it is that makes ornamental cherry trees weep in the first place.

To do that, we need to discuss apical dominance.

Apical dominance means the tip of the main, tallest shoot controls the dormancy and growth of buds that sit lower on the stem. They do this using a hormone called auxin.

Some species have strong apical dominance, meaning they are primarily composed of a single stem with little