Will a Peach Tree With Storm Damage Grow Back From the Root?

Plant Physiology

• Peach trees, as well as many other trees, have the capacity to rejuvenate themselves after a limb breaks off or a tree trunk is severed from the roots. Plant cells can differentiate, which means they modify themselves to become shoot or root tissues based on the presence of hormones. When a peach tree is snapped in a storm, the tissues above the break will dehydrate and die. However, the roots remain alive and continue to absorb water and nutrients to the lower parts of the trees to which they are still connected. Carbohydrate reserves in the roots also supply energy for creation of new leafy sprouts to grow from the trunk and root flare.

Rejuvenation

• A storm-damaged peach tree has the potential to sprout from its roots to create a new tree, but it does not always happen. Only healthy, disease-free peach trees sprout from their roots. Peach trees stressed from drought, battling a disease or old and lacking vigor are not as equipped to expend energy reserves to produce suckering shoots from the roots or remaining areas of the trunk. Wounded peach trees and their lush new growth are often more susceptible to insect pests, such as peach tree borers.

Growth Response

• Sprouts that arise from the base of a storm-damaged peach tree will occur randomly: some from the root flare at the base of the trunk and others from areas on the remaining parts of the trunk, regardless of height. The sprouts will grow quickly and be long and leggy. Lots of leaves develop because of the extensive root system that supplies huge amounts of water and nutrients. To re-create a tree, the gardener must select one strong, vigorous shoot and prune away all other shoots. The lone remaining shoot will become the new trunk and further develop like a sapling, eventually branching to form a rounded canopy after several years.

Peach Tree Identity

• Peach trees today are propagated by cuttings, not by seed. This is to perpetuate the genetic integrity of the tree cultivar and create more trees that produce the same type and expected quality of fruit. Seeds in peach pits do germinate and become trees. A seed-grown peach tree will sprout back as itself. Cutting-grown peach trees are grafted onto other trees' root systems.

  Grafted peach trees, if cut down or broken in a storm, can sprout back but may have different qualities. If the roots are of a different variety than the trunk and branches, the root sprouts will be the genetic material of the roots. Leafy sprouts from the roots on grafted peach trees neither look nor fruit the same as the sprouts on the grafted variety fused atop the root system.