creating multi-stemmed birch?

magicbastarder wrote: »

i have access to a fair few birch seedlings, and have a notion to try to create some multi stemmed birch; i've seen a few recently i like the look of. is it simply pot luck if i prune the existing seedlings back hard and see if they develop multiple stems, or is there possibly a technique to it i'm not aware of?

I have stimulated the production of extra stems (suckers) by accident with a young lilac tree in my garden. I was disposing of used horse bedding and building up the soil in that area of the garden as it is a bit thin and rocky in that part in particular and threw in lots of wheel barrows of wood chips and s***. I meant to spread the mounds of stuff a bit more evenly later on but forgot about it as I think I was ducking out of the rain when doing the job. When I came back to the Syringa vulgaris tree a few weeks later and raked away the mounds of material that were up against the trunk of the young tree, new stems had started to sprout out from the sides of the trunk that were buried. I wanted to keep it growing as a tree so snapped off the young shoots but if you wanted to have something become multi-stemmed it might be worth trying burying it in compost or soil leaving only the tip showing and with some shoot buds then buried underground to perhaps become extra stems. I reckon this would be dependent on the type of tree to some extent with the lilac tree a bit more liable to become multi-stemmed than some others but this would be the approach I would try. Maybe trimming off the apical tip after other buds are buried would be worth a go as well.