This year, too many cones-seeds have formed on young thujas. What is the reason and what to do about it? Get rid of them or leave them as they are? The view of the bushes became untidy. I want to help them somehow...

Why bumps appear on the thuja and whether they need to be removed

Anyone who is at least a little familiar with the principles of building garden compositions or is simply fascinated by the beauty and grandeur of coniferous plants will surely give the palm to various types and varieties of thuja. This is just a lifesaver for a garden designer. Well, it’s impossible to do without it in landscape business, because it is a vertical accent in the garden, an element of year-round decorativeness, and a fertile material for hedges ...

Yes, these plants are beautiful, beyond competition. Almost perfect, until they are covered in a certain period of small brown cones. Is it bad or good? Some people really dislike the fruits, because they resemble dried, diseased tops of shoots or brown growths from afar. What to do in this case, how to save the beauty? Is it really left to approach each instance of this plant with a bucket and a pruner and cut, cut, cut until all are cleaned up? Of course, you can do just that if there are only two or three specimens of thuja on the site and they are young and rather undersized. Perhaps this is the best option for such a case. But nobody canceled the laws of nature.

Tui cones are valued in folk medicine: they are used to make ointments and tinctures that fight many diseases.

The buds are seeds and will appear on the plant again next year. In a year, your thuja will become taller, it will be harder to jump with a pruner and a bucket, cutting off the excess.

There is an opinion that a lot of thuja cones give out after a dry summer. Thus, a plant under stress thinks that it is in danger of complete drying out, and tries to compensate for this by reproduction. Water your plants more abundantly during periods of drought.

You can also advise to kill two birds with one stone: cut the thuja. Thus, you will get rid of brown cones and form a beautiful crown. Thuja after shearing will lay more buds and next year new shoots will grow from them. The plant will become more fluffy, "stuffed", slender and in general, the way you want to see it: a cone, a column, a ball, a spiral, or just a neat bush. Of course, this will not happen in one year, but after a couple of years of haircuts, you will begin to notice the result.

In the case of planting thuja in a row by regular haircuts, you can not only rid them of cones, but also form a dense hedge of a given height.

When forming plants, a number of conditions must be observed.

1. Timing. Pruning of conifers is carried out in the spring before the release of new shoots. At the same time, it is desirable to cut off last year's by no more than one third. Then you can re-pruning in late June - early July. The more regularly haircuts are carried out, the more noticeable the result will be. Meaning, if you cut your plant this year, be sure to do it next year as well.
2. Use quality, well-sharpened garden tools. Small plants in the second or third year after planting can be cut with secateurs. Then you can't do without garden shears. Good garden tools, in my opinion, are produced by the Japanese company ARS.
3. Top dressing. Do not forget to feed plants weakened by haircuts. In principle, thujas tolerate the formation of a crown with a haircut. But still, this event is stressful to a certain extent. Therefore, do not forget to regularly feed your thujas with special fertilizers for conifers (they can be purchased at any gardening store) and anti-stress drugs, such as Epin-extra or Zircon. Give preference to minerals. More magnesium, less nitrogen. From organic biohumus or rotted compost will do. Fertilize in early spring after the snow melts and a second time in summer. It is better to complete them by August, so as not to provoke the growth of new shoots, which will not have time to ripen by winter.

If it is not planned to plant plants with an artificially given crown shape on the site and you like the natural landscape style, then you should consider this at the planting planning stage and buy thuja varieties with the least propensity to form seeds. These, for example, include everyone's favorite variety of thuja western Smaragd. This is indeed one of the most beautiful columnar varieties with pleasant emerald green needles, not prone to seasonal browning.

Tui Smaragd are less prone to seasonal color change

If we take another variety of Brabant for comparison, then it has much more cones, the crown is more loose and prone to a winter change in color to a more brown one.

Brabant grows faster than Smaragd, so it is more suitable for creating a hedge

Remember - nobody canceled the laws of nature! Maybe you should put up with natural beauty, because it's like freckles on a woman's face - a kiss from the sun!

Thuja: growing by sowing seeds. Master class, photo

The simplest and most convenient breeding technology for thuja is sowing seeds before winter in the ground. Seedlings come out strong, develop well. You can get any number of seedlings in a fairly short time. Here's how it's done:

Why is it convenient to propagate thuja seeds
winter-hardy and unpretentious. This is one of the best plants for: thanks to evergreen needles, it protects the garden from cold winds both in summer and in winter. But for a hedge you need a large number of very expensive plants. Where can you get so many seedlings if you don’t want to incur extra costs?
By propagating thuja with seeds, you can get any number of seedlings in 3-4 years. And do not be afraid that in the first year of life the seedlings reach only 7 centimeters. After 2 years of cultivation, they will grow up to 50 cm, and subsequently they will give an increase of about 30 cm per season.

How to prepare thuja seeds from cones
Tui seeds ripen in late August - early September. Seeds must be collected before the buds open.

After planting, water and mulch with peat. Feed once every 2-3 weeks in the same way as in the previous season, water in dry weather, loosen the soil after watering and remove weeds at the same time as loosening. In the third year of cultivation, when the thuja grown from seeds reaches a height of 50 centimeters, it can be planted in a permanent place.

For hedges, uniform planting material is needed, but when growing thuja from seeds, splitting of forms occurs: seedlings from sowing are obtained with different outlines and crown densities. This problem has a solution. At the age of 2-3 years, the future shape of the crown is already clearly visible in thuja seedlings. You can easily select the required amount of homogeneous planting material for a hedge or other purposes. In addition, the thuja tolerates a haircut very well, and the desired shape of the hedge can be obtained, even if the seedlings are slightly different.

Illustrations for the material: OOO Publishing House Gastronom

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Tui rightfully occupy a central place in many suburban areas. High frost resistance and a variety of thuja varieties make these shrubs indispensable in landscape compositions and for creating evergreen hedges. Young dense thuja bushes are especially loved by gardeners, but in grown plants at the age of about 10 years, the crown often looks sparse and sick. In many cases, the cause is the ripening of thuja fruits - small cones. From a distance, such thujas seem to be covered with dried shoots and growths.

Dan Mullen/Flickr.com

5u5/Flickr.com

While the thuja are young and undersized, or there are only 2-3 of them, then you can simply limit yourself to a constant haircut with a pruner, annually cutting off all the extra cones. But this is easy to do only while the thuja are young and low. Every year in the spring, before the growth of new shoots begins, prune the thuja and cut off no more than a third of the length of last year's growth. In the middle of summer, the trees are pruned again. With a regular haircut, you will get rid of brown cones and form a beautiful dense crown. New branches will constantly grow on the thuja, the plant will be fluffy. In addition, this will allow you to quickly change the crown, give it the shape of a cone, column, spiral.

F. D. Richards / Flickr.com

During periods of drought, water the plants more abundantly. Thuja loves regular evening or morning spraying with water along the crown, actively growing new green branches. Spray plants weakened by haircuts from May to August with anti-stress preparations "Epin-extra" or "Zircon". Processing can be carried out up to three times during the summer, taking breaks up to two weeks.

They will help to grow green sprigs of top dressing with special mineral fertilizers for conifers with magnesium. They provide intensive growth and bright healthy coloring of needles, reduces darkening in the winter. From organic, only rotted compost and biohumus can be used. Top dressing is carried out twice, once in early spring and then in summer. In mid-August, the plants stop feeding, so as not to stimulate the growth of new shoots and the laying of flower buds.

S. Rae / Flickr.com

Choose thuja varieties that are slightly prone to seed formation. For example, for the columnar variety “Smaragd” of the western thuja, the formation of cones is not very typical. It retains emerald green needles regardless of the season. But in the fast-growing variety "Brabant", cones are formed in large quantities. As a result, its crown looks more loose. This variety is also prone to seasonal browning.

A set of agricultural practices and the correct selection of varieties will help reduce the formation of cones on arborvitae and improve the appearance of your plantings.

Thuja (or thuja) is a gymnosperm monoecious coniferous plant belonging to the Cypress family. Often there is another poetic name for this plant - the tree of life. As a rule, these are evergreen small trees or shrubs, but still sometimes there are large trees up to 60 meters high. The leaves are very beautiful, have a decorative appearance, needle-shaped. The fruit of the thuja is a small oblong cone with flat winged seeds that ripen in the fall of the first year.

Homeland thuja - North America and East Asia.

Preparation and storage of thuja

If it is necessary to use young shoots for medicinal purposes, they are harvested in May-June, dried in the usual way and stored in closed tight bags or boxes. Seeds are harvested after the end of the ripening period - the end of autumn or the beginning of winter. All other parts of the evergreen, subject to the growth of thuja nearby in ecologically clean areas, are available all year round. It is unacceptable to harvest and use the raw materials of plants located in the industrial areas of the city, near roads and at intersections.

Application in everyday life

Thuja is better known as a beautiful ornamental evergreen plant, pleasing to the eye with its appearance all year round. This plant is very unpretentious to living conditions, easily tolerates the gas pollution of large cities and industrial areas, therefore it is one of the most common elements of the urban landscape. There are only five main species of the genus, but a huge number of garden forms have been developed, thanks to which you can create landscape compositions of amazing beauty.

The composition and medicinal properties of thuja

1. Thuja in all its parts contains essential oils with a characteristic coniferous aroma, resins, saponins, flavonoids, glycosides and other active substances.
2. Young shoots contain a large amount of vitamins and minerals.
3. Thuja, like all its coniferous relatives, has medicinal properties, among which the most pronounced antimicrobial.
4. Volatile phytoncides of thuja can kill the pathogens of many viral, bacterial and fungal diseases, so even ordinary walks among the thickets help to improve health.
5. In addition, this plant is able to fight inflammation of various organs, promotes wound healing, relieves pain, fights worms and resists the occurrence of malignant tumors.

The use of thuja in folk medicine

Prevention and control of viral, bacterial and antifungal diseases with help. Tui essential oil

For this purpose, thuja essential oil is used. It can be used both in aroma lamps and by instilling a few drops into special medallions for essential oils that are worn around the neck. It is especially good to wear such medallions for children during periods of epidemics of viral diseases. You can buy special beautiful medallions for kids in the form of cute animals, fish or favorite cartoon characters.

For adults during the epidemic and at the initial stage of the disease, it is recommended to take an alcohol tincture of thuja - dilute 5 drops in a tablespoon of water. Consume three times a day after meals.

Treatment of cystitis, prostatitis, prostate adenoma with alcohol tincture of thuja

To prepare a medicinal tincture, it is necessary to grind 3 tablespoons of fresh thuja needles, pour a bottle of alcohol (200 ml), close tightly with a cork. Infuse for 14 days, shaking the vial. Strain the resulting tincture and store in a dark glass bottle. 30 drops of tincture are dissolved in 100 ml of pure water and taken twice a day, half an hour or an hour after a meal for a course of 7-10 days, which can be repeated if necessary after the same period of time.

Fight against diseases of the musculoskeletal system

In a thermos put 2 tbsp. l. needles, pour half a liter of boiling water, soak for 1 hour. The infusion is filtered, cooled and drunk 1/4 cup three times a day. Recommended for osteochondrosis and arthritis for two weeks. For external rubbing of the joints, an alcohol infusion of thuja is used (2 tablespoons of chopped pine needles are insisted in a glass of vodka for a week).

Treatment of hemorrhoids with a decoction of thuja

1 st. l. thujas are poured with a cup of boiling water, wrapped and insisted for 1 hour (you can just in a thermos). Then a cotton swab is moistened in the tincture, squeezed slightly, applied to the affected area and kept for half an hour in a supine position on the stomach. The procedure is carried out in the evening, for 7-10 days.

Treatment of skin formations with alcohol tincture of thuja

To remove calluses, polyps, warts and papillomas 3 tbsp. l. needles are poured with 150 ml of alcohol (in some recipes it is recommended to use Triple cologne), insist 2 weeks, and then lubricate the desired areas of the skin. For more effective removal of corns and corns, a 1: 1 tincture of alcohol is mixed with pharmacy petroleum jelly. The mixture is fixed with a bandage. Several of these procedures will help get rid of the most chronic and painful calluses.

The use of thuja in gynecology

To combat thrush and leucorrhoea, douching from a tincture of young thuja cones is recommended: 1 tbsp. l. cones are infused in a thermos with 0.5 liters of boiling water. Then the tincture is carefully filtered through the canvas, the volume is brought to the original and used for washing and douching. Procedures are carried out 2 times a day for 5-7 days, until the condition improves.

Contraindications

• Thuja is a slightly poisonous plant, so when using it, you must strictly adhere to the recommended dosages.
• It is forbidden to use thuja inside pregnant, lactating, children, as well as people suffering from neuropsychiatric disorders.
• Walks among fragrant thuja trees and bushes have no contraindications and will be useful for everyone.

Thuya, a genus of evergreen coniferous trees and shrubs (cypress family). 5 species grow in East Asia and North America, often on cold marshy soils. It was brought to Europe in the first half of the 16th century from North America (around 1554). One of the everyday names of thuja - "tree of life", was given by the king of France. In Russia, thuja appeared relatively recently and soon became common for gardens and parks on the Black Sea coast of the Caucasus, the southern coast of Crimea, in Azerbaijan. On the territory of Ukraine it is cultivated as an ornamental plant. Trees 30 to 60 meters high (rarely 75). It grows slowly, especially in the first half of life. It is one of the most common ornamental park trees, rarely shrubs. It is quite durable, lives up to 100 years (under artificial conditions up to 150 years), winter-hardy, shade-tolerant, not very demanding on soil fertility and tolerates shearing. Widely and everywhere bred in gardens and parks.

In Russia, western thuja and giant thuja - pyramidal are common in culture. The homeland of the western thuja is the east of North America, where it is known under the names "American tree of life" and "northern white cedar". Coniferous evergreen tree up to 25 m high with a conical crown. Trunk up to 1 m in diameter with light reddish-brown thin bark. In young plants, the crown is narrow, pyramidal, but with age it in most cases becomes ovoid. Western thuja has rot-resistant, soft and easily processed wood with yellowish sapwood and a light brown heartwood, very durable, without resin passages. It has long been used by the Indians to build canoes. The bark is thin, smooth, reddish-brown, exfoliating in the form of narrow ribbons with age. It tolerates heat, drought and air pollution with smoke, gases and dust. Grows slowly. Most often, this plant is used to create alleys and hedges, as well as in single plantings. It withstands molding well, so it is an ideal material for creating any architectural forms. The crown is compact, narrowly pyramidal when young and ovoid when mature, often descending to the ground. With natural growth, the crown is broadly oval and branches in a horizontal plane. Under the conditions of culture, you can find trees with the most diverse crown shape, artificially obtained with the help of garden shears. Depending on the type of crown, there are varieties of thuja: juvenile, columnar, spherical, pyramidal, weeping - dwarf form.

Young shoots are flat, bright green in the third year, becoming round, red-brown. The upper side of the shoots is dark green and shiny, the lower side is dull and light. The plant is monoecious. The needles are scaly, flat, small, 5-7 mm long with a resin gland on the back, rounded at the top, dark yellowish green, located oppositely on the shoots and tightly pressed against them, imbricate scales lean on each other. The needles live for 2-3 years and fall off together with small twigs (vetkopad). Cones are ovate - oblong, small, 7-15 mm long, bent downwards, small, green at first, and when ripe brown woody, consist of 3-6 pairs, bearing 2 seeds each, leathery, lignified crosswise opposite light brown scales , formed at the ends of the shoots, ripen in autumn in the year of flowering. Seeds flattened, with two narrow straw-yellow wings. Seeds ripen and spill out of the cones in autumn in the year of pollination.

The use of western thuja in medicine

It is known that thuja wood contains up to 0.12% yellow essential oil. Essential oil (from the leaves) has a bactericidal effect, is used in medicine, perfumery.

For medicinal purposes, they are used as a cytostatic, choleretic, expectorant, diaphoretic, hemostatic agent.

Tui preparations exhibit anti-inflammatory, anthelmintic, anti-allergic, antibacterial effects. Thuja is especially widely used in dermatology - both externally and internally - in the form of decoctions, tinctures. In particular, with lupus erythematosus, scleroderma, viral diseases (herpes), a tincture of thuja shoots in 70% alcohol is used - 10-15 drops three times a day. When applied externally, a positive effect is observed in the treatment of inflammation of the hair follicles of the skin (dousing with infusions), lupus erythematosus and herpes, acne vulgaris and rosacea (lubricating with tincture).

Thuja is a very popular remedy for removing warts. For the treatment of warts, a tincture of fresh thuja western leaves is used, which is prepared in a ratio of 1:5. Warts are treated with the prepared tincture twice a day in three doses with an interval of two to three minutes for 2-3 weeks. Some doctors inject an alcohol tincture into the middle of a callus or wart (injection). Other authors suggest mixing the tincture (up to 10-15%) with petroleum jelly or lard and lubricating warts, sometimes warts or corns are sprinkled with dried plant powder.

Thuja is used in the form of tinctures, decoctions, poultices, ointments, both alone and in combination with other medicinal plants, depending on the diagnosis. Since this plant is poisonous, it must be used carefully, not exceeding the allowable doses.

Thuja in Karagai

First of all, in order to find answers to my questions, I decided to take a closer look at this tree, and after the lessons I went to the thuja. She is very fluffy and beautiful. This year, a lot of cones have grown on the thuja, like on other conifers that I saw in the forest during a walk. Walking through the forest, on a day off with my mother, we have never seen such coniferous trees as thuja in our forests.

This means that this tree is not from our area, perhaps it is foreign and brought from somewhere.

At school, I asked Irina Nikolaevna: “Who planted this tree near the school?” After asking the teachers of our school, Irina Nikolaevna and I learned that this tree was brought to us from another area by the biology teacher Lidia Stepanovna Ponosova and planted here more than thirty years ago. The teachers of our school said that when the thuja was planted, all the teachers and students began to take care of this tree. Once they even wanted to dig it up, put it in a tub and put it in the school so that it would not freeze in winter. But when they began to dig, they saw that its roots went very deep into the ground, and the tree had to be left in place. In childhood, thuja, when she was still small, was made of straw and coniferous twigs for the winter, so that the thuja would not freeze in winter. When the thuja grew up, they began to pay less attention to it, and then they completely forgot about it. Many students who are now studying at our school do not know anything about this tree, even about what it is called. Some students treated Tuya badly. They broke off the branches of the tree, as far as their hands grabbed, and from this the trunk of the thuja was not protected from frost and wind. In winter, in severe frosts, the bark of the tree cracked, and therefore a large wound formed on the trunk of the arborvitae.

During the walk, Irina Nikolaevna and I measured the tree trunk with a string, and then in the class we measured the length with a ruler. The girth of the trunk turned out to be 41cm. We counted the whorls, by which we can say that our thuja is more than 30 years old.

Having learned about my research work, our acquaintances told me that in Karagay they saw a tree along Michurin Street, similar to a thuja. I walked along this street more than once, but did not notice this beautiful tree, thinking that it was a Christmas tree. Then on the day off, my mother and I went to this street to look at that tree. Indeed, another thuja tree grows near house number 5 along Michurin Street. The thuja along Michurin Street is different from the one that grows near the school. It is more fluffy, sprawling, its trunk is divided into several branches. Perhaps this is a different kind of thuja. This thuja is also many years old, but we could not find out who planted it, since the family living in this house does not know about it. When they bought the house, this tree was already big. I picked a few small twigs with buds from the tree to do my research, since I already had twigs from the arborvitae that grows near the school. When comparing the branches, I found that the needles on the branches, which are larger from the thuja along Michurin Street, there are more cones on one branch and they are longer in size than on our thuja.

The length of the scales of the cone

The cone of thuja looks like a rose or tulip bud. It is cinnamon in color, made of coarse scales, inside of which lies a small seed. When examining the cones, I did not immediately discover that some of them have seeds. I mistook them for cone scales. Tui seeds are very small, despite this, huge trees grow from them. The seeds are wrapped on both sides with a light film, in the form of wings, inside of which lies a small seed. The seeds are so light that when they breathe they scatter in different directions. It became interesting to me whether the seeds differ in size from different thujas, taking a ruler, I began to measure the length of the seeds.

TUI seed length

Yes, my assumptions were correct. Thuja seeds along Michurin Street are slightly larger than the school thuja. The photo clearly shows which wings the seeds have, and that their size is very small compared to one penny.