The apical shoot on this JBP is pushing a second flush of growth. It was not de-candled: the spring bud elongated into a shoot, developed summer buds which are now elongating and pushing out needles. Has anyone seen this before?
Chop stick pointing at the spring shoot, not decandled.
It looks like the needles for the first flush are fairly long, but the length of the first flush is not very long. Maybe the tree decided it needed more needles (like when we decandle) and decided to push another flush.
While working on a Scots pine today, I was thinking about what might have caused the combination I proposed above. I am thinking of weaker nutrition and dryer than normal during bud set so the buds were weaker followed by more normal nutrition and moisture during spring growth. All of this is speculation and not based upon data/observation so if anyone has a better idea, I would like to hear it.
I would think a strong tree that is a multi flush pine, would push a second flush. I have trees that pretty much continuously grow from spring push to fall leaf drop. With my elongated species pushing growth over winter some times. If you went hands off, I would stay hands off and enjoy the extra growth 
Danielle
The length of the 1st flush is about 12” in the apex, tree is very strong this year with lots of robust spring growth and sturdy needles. A few of the lower shoots, secondaries on the next leader, were decandled, maybe 4 or 5. wouldn’t even call this partial decandling, there is a lot of last year’s and this year’s needle mass. Tree is still in development, so much of this growth will be allowed to run for another few years.
The question was, “has anyone seen this before”…looks like no, but thanks for the responses
