Today I was finally able to start the bald cypress (Taxodium distichum) collecting season. The weather was cool and dry, meaning ideal; the material was plentiful. In fact, I pretty much stopped collecting when I ran out of charged battery packs – which was for the best, as I had to do the cleaning up and potting on the back side. My personal battery pack barely lasted through it.
Here’s the gang, waiting for processing. You can see the nice, fluted trunks. They’re mostly medium sized specimens, with trunks in the 3-4″ diameter range.
Here’s one of them after a cleanup and final root-pruning, just prior to potting in a growing tub. Ideally, you want this sort of buttressing in the lower trunk. It’s the classic bald cypress growth habit, and one of the reasons bonsai artists prize them.
This tree has a 4.5″ trunk about 5″ from the soil surface, and is chopped at 29″. I’m thinking it would make a nice, graceful flat-top bald cypress bonsai.
Here’s an interesting specimen. Notice the bulging on the root coming toward the front? Yes, that’s the beginnings of a knee. We find such examples from time to time. This one just happened to be worth bringing home. The trunk measures 4″ in diameter and it’s chopped at 21.5″. Plenty of styling possibilities.
Some of the bald cypresses down south are starting to push buds already. A few on my bench are doing so. I’m thinking that means these trees will start showing activity in two to three weeks. Stay tuned; I’ll begin posting some for sale as soon as I can.