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Question about pruning a bullhorn acacia 3 years 5 months ago #63139

  • Mcamp886
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Hi everyone,

I’ve tried to research this a bit online without much success, so I thought I would ask here to see what folks with more experience say. Most of what I have found about pruning acacia trees is focused on landscape tree outdoors. I have a large bullhorn acacia (Vachellia cornigera) that is growing indoors under good grow lights. I just kind of let it do its thing and trim branches back when it starts to shade out the other plants under the light. Id like to keep it as a bonsai, but it’s been growing for years without much direction. The result is basically very long leader that grows straight up, which I know is pretty common for acacia. The thing grows like a weed during the growing season.

My question is would it be harmful to cut it down to the main trunk to get branching to be more compact? There is no foliage lower on the tree. If essentially cutting off all the foliage is okay, when is the best time to hard prune a tropical tree that is grown indoors?

Ive attached some pictures below to show what I mean. Sorry they arent very clear.

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Question about pruning a bullhorn acacia 3 years 5 months ago #63148

  • leatherback
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Acaccia are a bit of an odd group. THey are often pruned in the wild (hence the thorns) and deal with it well.
I still personally would opt for big cut when it is dormant, just before you bring it into growing season mode.
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Question about pruning a bullhorn acacia 2 years 1 month ago #74825

  • Bonusbonsi
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Maybe cut the leafless wood out first and shorten the main leader by half

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