by Zach Smith | Nov 6, 2016 | Bald Cypress, Crape myrtle, Sweetgum
The weekend’s almost over. I spent a good bit of time yesterday and today cleaning benches and reorganizing my trees. We seldom get fall color around here, which I guess is the price you pay for not having excessively cold weather each winter (*brrr*), but here’s one exception:
This is Allen Gautreau’s Crape myrtle, and it’s put on some yellow and red this past week. A lot of the leaves are already off the tree, so it won’t be much longer until it’s bare. But it’s still nice to see the change.
As I mentioned in an earlier post on this one, it needs a semi-hard pruning next year and to be repotted. It’s a great old bonsai.
Here’s one of my lemonade Bald cypresses from a couple of weeks ago. I had stripped off the dead bark as part of making something out of it. Yesterday and today I gave it a couple of coats of lime sulfur, in order to bleach and help preserve the wood. It’s turned a nice white color now, which will fade a bit over time. This is more or less what the color looks like in the wild once the main part of the bole has died.
I’m frequently asked about leaf size reduction on Sweetgums. In the wild, their leaves are usually about 5″ long, and because they are attached to the branches by petioles these too are about 5″ long. This makes for a real challenge in creating proportionality. The good news is, however, once you have your Sweetgum branch structure established and are working into tertiary ramification and beyond, the leaves get nice and small. It also helps to let the tree get a little pot-bound.
The tree pictured here has a 1.25″ trunk base and is about 13″ tall. The largest leaves on the tree (many have fallen since, of course, it’s fall) are just over 1″ long, with most not more than 1″. And petiole size reduces in step with leaf size reduction. This is another good reason for growing native Sweetgum as bonsai.
I hope you’ve had and enjoyable Sunday with your bonsai.
by Zach Smith | Oct 30, 2016 | Bald Cypress, Care, Styling, Wiring
In keeping with my fun series on making great bonsai out of less-than-great starting material, I wanted to show you what you too can do with a little time and a good plan of action. Because I tend to send my initial efforts at making bonsai lemonade to other artists across the country, I don’t always find out what happens on the back end. I had that opportunity recently when a good client/bonsai friend contacted me following my post on cutting trees back hard when they need it. You see, he had gotten one of my earlier efforts at making bonsai lemonade out of material that otherwise may have ended up on a compost heap. It was a Bald cypress I had collected in 2010 and then rushed the angle cut in the apex. This jarred the tree excessively, resulting in die back far down the trunk. But the tree was alive all the way around at the base, and so I stuck it in a tub and just let it grow wild figuring one day I’d make something of it.
Here’s the earliest photo of the subject tree I have, taken in January 2013. As you can see, most of the trunk is dead … but, there’s a ring of living tissue going all the way around and a nice long shoot I’ve allowed to run in order to thicken it. You see, I had a plan.
Here’s the first iteration of the plan, from August of 2014. I saw a dead snag and a new trunk. Though I think this could have worked, the problem with it was that the dead wood had begun to rot fairly extensively in the four years following collection. So it would have taken heroic measures to preserve the snag as originally envisioned.
This photo is from October 2014, and from a different angle.
And a couple of months later, after bowing to the inevitable with regard to the snag. It was at this point that I first saw the bonsai in this piece of otherwise lousy material. Which brings up a good point. Sometimes you don’t know for sure what the best design is for a tree, when first starting out. And that’s okay. Time and patience will usually pay off. So I wasn’t too concerned about this tree; I knew a good design would eventually present itself.
So the tree went on to its new home in 2015, and the training plan was continued. In this photo the branches have been wired out and positioned. You can see there’s a new leader, which had been grown out following a round of grow and chop. This leader would be allowed to run, to continue development of the new Bald cypress bonsai.
Fast-forward to the present, and you can see what has been achieved in a relatively short time. This is a truly great job of creating the rest of the crown of this bonsai. I’ve recommended a semi-hard pruning next year, to bring the silhouette inward a bit, but it’s hard to argue that this once-poor piece of material is well on its way to being a stunning bonsai.
Here’s a view of the tree from the opposite side. Which is better? I personally like them both, so I suggested that it be repotted into a round container in order to allow the tree to be viewed from either direction.
I think this is an absolutely terrific job in making this bonsai. Wouldn’t you agree? Doesn’t it make you want to find a lemon to work on?
Comments are welcome, as always.
by Zach Smith | Oct 29, 2016 | Bald Cypress, Care, Collecting, Potting, Pruning, Styling, Wiring
Last weekend we made a promising future Bald cypress (Taxodium distichum) bonsai from a piece of material that did not come through the collecting process intact. I’m a big proponent of not wasting material, and the fact is a lot of great bonsai come from not-so-promising beginnings. Don’t forget, it’s quite common for a bonsai to make a very clear statement about the hardships of life. We see this most frequently in juniper and pine bonsai, where dead wood is prominently featured. In the wild, Bald cypresses are often seen with huge dead snags where their former crowns once stood proud.
Here’s another BC lemon from this past winter’s collecting efforts. Despite good post-lifting care and sealing the chop, it just didn’t bud all the way up the trunk. As they say, it happens sometimes. But that’s okay. I can definitely make some lemonade out of this tree.
Here’s another viewing angle for this specimen. At this point I’m not sure where the front is. But that’s okay. I don’t have to make that decision now, or even a final decision after the tree is potted. Once some time passes, I may want to turn it. For now, I’ll show both angles and then settle on a preliminary front.
Just so you can see how Bald cypress heals, take a look at this closeup. The callus is rolling from the point on the trunk where the living tissue held up through to the root zone, and onto the dead tissue. When I stripped off the bark, it readily shows. Pretty neat, eh?
And this is what can happen if you aren’t careful stripping off the bark on a specimen like this. Notice the nice white tissue beneath the bark; contrast it with the dead wood above. Is this a long-term problem? Not at all. If you’ll notice the round spot near the top on the right side of where I tore the living bark, that was actually another shoot. The tree is going to push a bud there, which means the living tissue near that spot on the trunk will keep on living and will produce callus this coming year. I don’t keep a shoot where the bud pushes, but I’ll let it grow a bit for a year or two in order to ensure I have live tissue all the way around the trunk of this tree.
Now I’ve wired the living shoot, which is my new leader. And I think you can see how this establishes the “dead snag-new tree” concept at its inception.
A view from the reverse angle. I can see both possibilities.
Now the snag has its preliminary carving and the new leader is shortened. This establishes the proportions I envision in the finished bonsai. I want the young tree part of this bonsai to be shorter than the snag, to make a statement of age and hardship. And though I’m going to let a new shoot run and lengthen in 2017 in order to thicken the entire young tree part of this design, I will reduce it back to within this silhouette as I complete the styling work.
I like this front for now, and here’s the bonsai-to-be in its training pot. It doesn’t look like much right now, but I can assure you this is going to be a very attractive bonsai in about three years.
The trunk base of this tree is 2.5″ and it’s 21″ to the tip of the snag.
What do you think? Is this good bonsai lemonade or not? Just leave a comment below.
by Zach Smith | Oct 22, 2016 | Bald Cypress, Care, Collecting, Styling, Wiring
A few weeks ago I posted a blog about a Bald cypress, Taxodium distichum, that I collected in 2015 and that failed to bud all the way up the trunk. I have a couple of others hanging around that I had been planning to make something of. Today it was time to work on one of them.
This specimen was collected this past January. It’s a relatively small cypress by most standards, with a 2″ trunk, but the taper and movement of the trunk are superb. Originally I felt it could make a nice addition to a forest, if not a specimen bonsai on its own, but unfortunately it decided not to bud all the way up the trunk.
The good news is, it did bud all the way around the lower part of the trunk, meaning the roots were alive all the way around. So today I decided to take advantage of the trunk and the largest of the shoots.
I peeled away the bark down to the living tissue, then wired what will be the new trunk of this tree. It’s not at all uncommon to see old cypresses whose main trunk has died, to be replaced with younger growth. As always, the cypress does its best to get tall. My plan is to develop the living leader into a complete tree. I should make a lot of headway next year.
You can get an idea of my vision here. I potted the tree at a slight slant, which brings the new leader more upright. This suggests that something may have happened to the tree in the course of its life, perhaps a storm that pushed it off its upright position and caused it to die back. But the will to live remains.
I’m looking forward to working on this tree in 2017. But if you’d like to take on that challenge, you can reserve it at our Bald Cypress Bonsai page and it’ll head your way next April.
by Zach Smith | Oct 2, 2016 | Bald Cypress, Care, Potting, Styling
I love forest plantings. With that said, I’ve seen countless poor forest plantings, and it’s all due to poor design. So how do you ensure that your design will pass muster? Is there a formula? Actually, there is. Here’s a bald cypress forest I assembled today from a group of saplings I’d grown from seed started a few years ago.
It’s not much to look at, having been made from an odd collection of less-than-stellar saplings, but focus your attention on the bases of the trunks. If you get this part right, the rest almost takes care of itself. If you get this part wrong, there’s not a lot you can do to correct the problem without ripping the forest apart and starting over.
So if you focus on the bases of the trunks, your brain should recognize something that “makes sense” to it. Bonsai forests are landscape scenes to an even greater extent than individual bonsai are. It’s not just a single tree, a lone sentinel as it were; it’s much more complex. In the grand world of bonsai, the forest planting lies smack in between the individual bonsai and saikei – a planting that consists of trees, stones, sometimes water, and even miniature buildings and figurines. It’s hard to do saikei well; it’s hard to do bonsai forests well. But I hope to make it a little easier for you.
Let’s start with how to plan a bonsai forest. First of all, the obvious. It’s going to have an odd number of trees, unless you’re going for the really big ones that are in excess of 11 trees. After 11, it’s not vital that you stick with odd numbers.
Second, the trees should have similar characteristics in terms of trunk style. For the most part, you don’t want to mix trees with straight trunks and trees with curving trunks (you can see that I need to actually wire a few of the specimens next spring to straighten them – not a huge chore, but necessary). You also want varying trunk sizes, namely, a largest focal tree, one to a few trees of somewhat smaller caliber, and other specimens with decreasing trunk sizes. You’ll want a couple of trees with really thin trunks, specifically to go in the rear of the planting.
Next comes the plot plan. For those of you who are experienced at making well-designed forest plantings, this doesn’t have to be formalized. If you’re new to the game, I’d highly suggest sitting down and making yourself a drawing like the one below.
Here I’ve reduced the design pictured above to a plot plan drawing. It’s basically the layout of the forest. It’s also a sure-fire way to create a design that looks right. Notice the dotted lines I’ve added that show a key principle of forest design – no trunks visually obscuring others, either from the front or side view. I’ve listed this and the other design principles in a nutshell, to the left. If you simply follow these rules, you’ll be hard-pressed to go wrong.
Have you done any forest plantings? Are you satisfied with the results? I’d love to hear any feedback you’re willing to share.
by Zach Smith | Sep 30, 2016 | Bald Cypress, Care, Collecting, Styling, Wiring
By now you know that I hate to give up on trees that didn’t go where they were supposed to when I first brought them home. Not that I never literally chuck out a piece of material, but if there’s something work salvaging I keep it on the bench or in a corner waiting its turn.
Here’s a classic example of a tree I just couldn’t give up on, a bald cypress (Taxodium distichum). Collected in Winter 2015, this was one of those really nice specimens that just failed to bud out near the top despite my best efforts – this happens on occasion. But it did throw a bud about a third of the way up, so I thought that I just might make something out of it one day. I fed the tree and kept it watered, but otherwise left it alone.
This growing season, I tied the “apical” shoot upright so it would extend and gain heft. The result was good. The tree has picked up some decent strength this year.
Just as important, the tree had thrown enough buds around the perimeter near the base that I figured the radial roots had to be alive. This is very important, considering how easily cypress wood rots when in contact with water. While I certainly could have carved the tree out into the ground, I much preferred the idea of a good stable buttressed base – that’s what impressive bald cypresses are all about, right? Today I dug around the base, and sure enough those roots are alive.
The first order of business today was the remove the bark from the dead parts of the tree. You can see the lovely cypress wood that emerged. And from this angle you can get a more exact idea of where that apical shoot emerges.
The next step in the process was to remove the unnecessary shoots that had grown around the base. The roots are alive, so I’ll get more budding all around – which will be allowed to grow a bit for the next couple of years but will ultimately be discouraged. For now, I wanted to see my planned design more clearly.
The view from the front.
And finally, the beginning of my vision for this future bald cypress bonsai. I’ll create a structure that is basically an informal upright tree regrown from an older specimen that died back – a style I’ve seen in the wild which is very impressive. I left a lower shoot which I think will help with the ultimate design (if not, I can easily whack it off later).
In 2017 I’ll transfer this tree to a growing tub to give it more room to grow and strengthen. I need the new young trunk to be about half the thickness of the dead trunk at the point where it emerges, which will take a few years. In time, though, I’m thinking this is going to be an awesome bonsai.
Tomorrow I plan to do some additional work on the dead wood, including some carving in the dead apex. I’ll post an update.
The base of this tree is 4″ in diameter about 4″ above the soil surface, and it’s almost 26″ to the tip of the dead apex.
I’d love to hear what you think about this bald cypress. Just leave a comment below.
