Bald Cypress Collecting Trip #1 For 2021

by | Jan 2, 2021 | Bald Cypress, Care, Collecting, Most Recent, Potting

bald cypress collecting trip #1 for 2021

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Happy New Year! Time to go collect some new BC’s.

Bald Cypress Collecting Trip #1 for 2021

I don’t like this time of year at all, but then again it’s the best time to collect Bald cypress. The weather was cool, the rain passed on New Year’s eve, so you couldn’t ask for better.

This is the largest specimen of the 11 we brought home today. The base is about 5″ across, and it’s chopped a bit tall at 29″. Good fluting on the trunk, and outstanding taper. I’m seeing formal upright all the way with this one.

This is another nice specimen, with a base of 3.5″ and also good fluting. I really like the trunk movement. But this one has an unusual feature I’m not sure whether to keep or not.

You probably noticed that odd root jutting out on the right side. The single jutting root doesn’t do anything for most BC’s, but this one has a “proto-knee” on it where it emerges from the trunk. I’ll call it an elbow. Does it stay or does it go? I imagine I’ll let whoever buys it make that choice.

Here’s another good size tree, with a trunk base of 4″ and chopped at 28″. It’ll make a fine informal upright, or even a nice flat-top.

And the final example for today, a smaller specimen that has some great movement and graceful taper. I chopped this one long on purpose; it’s definitely destined for the flat-top design.

We’ll be back out next week for more BC’s. In the meantime, let me know what you think about these.

Bonsai Odds & Ends – Big BC And Rip Van Winkle Color Up

by | Dec 12, 2020 | Bald Cypress, Care, Most Recent, Oaks, Willow, ZPC

big bc and rip van winkle color up

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Fall is supposed to mean fall color, but this is not necessarily the case here in the Deep South. With that said, I’m really proud of these two specimens.

Big BC and Rip Van Winkle Color Up

 

Down here in the Deep South you never know if you’ll get fall color on your deciduous trees. It’s truly hit or miss. With Bald cypress, though, you can exercise some control by defoliating in July. My big BC is a good example of this phenomenon. This year was a defoliation year, and true to form the tree produced a nice fresh set of foliage (which is the point, of course). That will often set you up for fall color (and more reliably if you’re farther north than I am). You can see here that it paid off for me.

“Rip Van Winkle,” Fall 2020. For those of you new to the site, this tree got named a few years back when it was about the last of my trees to wake up in spring.

This is, by far, the best this tree has looked in the fall since I collected it. What’s not apparent in this photo is the development that happened in 2020, whereby the tree moved into the ramification phase of its life as a bonsai. Willow oak produces willow-shaped leaves that tend to be quite long. In the early going you wonder if they’ll ever get smaller. I can tell you that they do, and I think this photo is proof. Yes, Willow oaks ramify, but you can’t rush this part of the development. The payoff comes years down the road, but it’s well worth the wait.

This photo is from December 2017, and I’m posting it to illustrate the principle I mentioned above. See how long the leaves are? That’s to be expected. If you aren’t famliar with the growth habit of the species, you might get frustrated if you’re getting leaves this long several years into your development work. But don’t despair. Before leaf reduction comes branch development. Notice the thickness of the branches in this photo. Compare them to the thickness of the branches in the previous photo. You can see where I’ve been going with this tree ever since it came home. We all want our bonsai to be finished quickly, but there are just some things that can’t be rushed (the base is 4″ across, to give you an idea of scale).

Bonsai Odds & Ends – Fall Arrives

by | Sep 20, 2020 | Bald Cypress, Care, Jade, Most Recent, Potting, Privet, Styling

bonsai odds & ends – fall arrives

the bonsai files

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There comes a point in the season where you can feel the change coming, yet it doesn’t quite. Then there comes a point where it just happens. Today fall arrived.

Bonsai Odds & Ends – Fall Arrives

Our heat broke a few days ago, and to be sure we’ve noticed signs of the season changing for a few weeks now (sinus-driven!). But today came a cold, light rain, the sort that taps you on the shoulder and says “Fall’s here.” Yes, it’s here. We can count on at least one warm snap between now and Christmas, but no matter: the growing season is effectively over.

In today’s post are a few trees I felt like commenting on. This Bald cypress was collected back in January and though it came out on schedule it plodded along until July. At that point we got another push of growth, and that told me the tree was going to be all right. The other day I decided to go ahead and start work on it. The plan is for a flat-top, which should proceed quickly in 2021.

But where’s the front? This is one possibility.

 

 

 

I think this may be a better front. It doesn’t matter right now, the styling will go the same. But which do you prefer?

I’m very pleased with this guy. It got defoliated back in July, and the regrowth was picture-perfect. I’m confident I’ll be able to just about complete the crown in 2021. After five years of training, this one is in the home stretch. (I’ve also commissioned a pot for it, so that will happen in 2021 as well.)

 

 

 

This pasture privet – along with all of its brothers – has kept on growing and will continue until it’s just too cold to keep on. The styling has gone quickly and quite well. I just wired that small branch on the right-hand side down near the base, and I think it’s going to add to the design.

I started working on this Spekboom last year. My goal was to directionally prune, and the tree cooperated very nicely; I have four changes of direction now in the upright trunk. It also threw a sub-trunk which I figured was ideal for thickening the base, so I just let it run all season. I’ve been toying with potting this specimen for weeks now, and today I brought it to the workbench determined to make it happen. In the course of studying it, I thought maybe the best thing to do with it was to make a semi-cascade specimen. I had this Chuck Iker square on the shelf, and I think the whole design worked out pretty well.

Obviously there’s plenty of work to do on the cascading branch. I plan to use directional pruning on it in 2021. Stay tuned for updates.

I imagine many of you are already experiencing outright cold weather, and possibly even some snow. I’m not there yet, but it won’t be long before I’m putting some trees to bed for the winter.

 

Bald Cypress Fun In 2021

by | Aug 30, 2020 | Bald Cypress, Care, Most Recent, Styling, Wiring

bald cypress fun in 2021

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It’s not too soon to think about trees I’m going to work on in 2021. Here are a few Bald cypresses that are on the list.

Bald Cypress Fun in 2021

I rarely do any Bald cypress trunk-building – I much prefer to collect them already built so all I have to do is make the apex and branching. But here’s a small specimen that died back following collection, and now that it’s pushing strong growth I have an idea about making a shohin BC. Most BC bonsai tend to be pretty tall, if not hefty too, so why not a specimen under 12″? It’ll be interesting to see how much I can get built with this one next year.

 

 

 

For those of you who have been following my blogs all year, we collected this one back in January. That massive hunk of wood you see is firmly attached to the tree, and I can only speculate that it was a large tree on its own and then died as this one grew up over and around it. The wood at the base is fused to the living tree. So I thought then and now, “Can it become a feature?”

That extra wood above the soil needed to be treated with lime sulfur to help preserve it, so I did that the other day. Until it fades it looks like a woody iceberg. I’m frankly not sure if it’s a feature or an obstacle to the ultimate design. What do you think?

I wired and did the initial styling on the living tree, and a plan that’s a little different has set itself in my mind. We’ll see where it goes in 2021.

“Iceberg dead ahead, Matey!”

Here’s another big one that grew sluggishly earlier in the season, and has only recently picked up strength. I can’t do anything with it this year, but that’s fine. I’m thinking flat-top in 2021, since I already have some classic pyramidal-style specimens in progress.

Let me know what you think. Are you already planning for 2021?

Where Should That BC Trunk Chop Go?

by | Aug 19, 2020 | Bald Cypress, Care, Most Recent, Pruning, Styling, Wiring

where should that bc trunk chop go?

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Essentially all collected large Bald cypresses are trunk-chopped. In the wild they may be 20 feet tall. When you get them home they end up 2 feet tall. Then you start building.

Where Should that BC Trunk Chop Go?

 

I acquired this nice stout Bald cypress back in May. It’s definitely a masculine tree, with a solid 4.5″ base (5″ above the soil) and decent fluting. As you can see, it pushed a very strong leader and that leader was dominant enough that it ended up with no real competition. Considering that this view of the tree is definitely the front, I was presented with two options: one, proceed with the angled chop despite the position of the leader; or two, chop it off and wait for new buds and hope one of them is smack dab in front. I decided to go with option one. The idea of losing all that progress just didn’t appeal to me, and besides, I’m very confident I can make it work as-is.

 

 

 

I do the angled trunk chop from the bottom up, using a large trunk splitter. Here you can see I’ve taken about half the bite out of this trunk so far. The leader lies below the original chop, so I need to get out my saw and level off the chop point before continuing.

Here’s what this ends up looking like. You can see the horizontal cut ends right where the leader emerges from the trunk. I need more wood up here in order to keep the rolling callus from producing a reverse taper (but not as much as you see here!). More carving is needed.

This is a textbook example of how a BC angled trunk chop should look. When the callus starts to roll, it’s going to be stronger at the top than the bottom. If you can picture the shape of the callus as more or less the reverse of the chop, you’ll see that when it’s rolled over completely I’m going to have a very smooth taper all the way from the bottom of the chop through to the base of the leader (and on up from there as I grow and chop the leader itself). The whole process will take about five to seven years, given the size of the wound. The trunk measured about 2.5″ across at the original chop, so that’s a good bit of ground for the callus to cover. But it will.

I figured that while I was at it, I might as well wire out the branches in the main part of the trunk. I left the branches on the leader alone, because they’re all going away when it gets chopped back. For now, I want all the growth up there I can get so the leader thickens going into fall. I’ll chop in late winter, in preparation for the emergence of the next leader in spring.

So back to the original question: Where should that BC trunk chop go? Ideally, in front. But you’ll eventually get a changeup from your tree instead of a fastball, so you adjust and make it work. This is going to work, and it’s going to work well. It’ll just take some time.

Adjusting Your Plans – Like With This Bald Cypress

by | Aug 18, 2020 | Bald Cypress, Care, Most Recent, Pruning, Styling, Wiring

adjusting your plans – like with this bald cypress

the bonsai files

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When we collect trees we usually have some specific expectations. Sometimes the tree decide to go a different direction. What to do? Adjust your plan.

Adjusting Your Plans – Like With This Bald Cypress

 

Collecting trees, once you’ve done enough of it, usually provides a more or less instantaneous idea of what the eventual bonsai will look like. You spot the specimen with potential, you size it up, then you lift it. All that has to happen next is for the tree to live, thrive and then withstand a lot of chopping, pruning and wiring (sometimes quite a bit of it!).

But it doesn’t always go so well. Take this Bald cypress as an example. Nice smaller specimen, trunk base 3″ and chopped at 24″ which is pretty standard. Nice movement and great taper. It could make a fine pyramidal style bonsai, or even a flat-top. Lots of potential. Only it didn’t bud out like it was supposed to. This happens sometimes, and when it does I just set the tree in the back of the nursery and leave it alone. Quite often, it’ll eventually bud near the base and then I keep watch on it to see if it’s a head-fake or the tree decided to try and make something of itself.

 

This one turned out to be a “half-back.” Half of it came back. Not only that, but you can see by the length of that top-most shoot that there’s actually some decent strength in the tree. So that means I can throw out Plan A and move right on to Plan B.

That leader has to be as upright as possible, at least to my way of thinking, so I wired and positioned it. The next step is to just leave it alone for the rest of 2020 and well into 2021. But after that, what? I could consider a trunk-chop right near the leader, and regrow everything above the chop. There’s nothing at all wrong with this, it’s done all the time. And you’d get a nice tree out of the deal. But there are other options.

Here’s the one I’ve settled on. I’ve seen BC’s like this in the swamp. Something happens to them at some advanced point in their life – maybe a lightning strike or old age, there are different possibilities. In this case I’m thinking that the tree broke in half, then struggled to regrow while the heartwood was eaten away. Regardless, I now have a good Plan B to work on and I’ll end up with a BC bonsai that’s a little different.

For those of you who have read up on Bald cypress, the heartwood of BC is virtually indestructable. At the same time, I have literally stood inside ancient specimens that are completely hollowed out, no heartwood at all, just a cylinder of sapwood supporting the entire structure of the tree (healthy structure, I might add, despite initial impressions). I’m not sure what causes this to happen to certain specimens, but it’s pretty fascinating.

Anyway, this is where I’m going with this cypress. Do you think it’s a good plan?