From the beginning of my bonsai journey almost three decades ago I’ve wanted a parsley hawthorn, Crataegus marshallii. Though I’ve collected my fair share of hawthorns, I’ve never found a parsley haw. Today that all changed. I was out collecting with a friend, and he took me to a vacant lot where he had collected a very large specimen years earlier. Though the leaves were off most of the trees, we did manage to find a few smaller seedlings that were still holding onto a few of their leaves. Here’s a branch from one.
I ended up with a handful of trees including the one at left, which is destined for the literati style. Considering this, I went ahead and put it into this nice Chuck Iker round. The color should complement the fall foliage really well. The trunk base is 1.5″ and I chopped it to 16″. I plan to add another 6-8″ to the height. I’m looking forward to working on this tree. It should be budding sometime in March.
Here’s another one I couldn’t resist putting straight into a bonsai pot. The trunk base on the larger tree is 1″ and it’s chopped at 14″. I just got the pot from Byron Myrick last week. This is going to be a really nice, graceful twin-trunk parsley hawthorn bonsai.