by Zach Smith | May 26, 2019 | Care, Maples, Pruning, Styling, Wiring
You may remember my tall Swamp maple, Acer rubrum ‘drummondii,’ from last fall. It’s been on death watch since I brought it home in 2017. Well, it’s not dead yet nor is it dying. I don’t yet see any signs of deterioration that have plagued my attempts to collect large specimens over the years. So we’ve got forward motion.
I showed you this snapshot from early March.
Quite a difference over the past couple of months! I’m very pleased with how this tree looks. To be sure, it’s overgrown by about 25%, but in order to properly develop the branch structure of this tree I’ve had to let it run a bit. I need all of the branches to be thicker. Branches are typically thickened by letting them run and pruning them back. With maples (and most other deciduous species), you have to strike a balance between allowing a branch to run and keeping your internodes close together. With this tree, I have worked hard to maintain relatively short internodes, so that when I prune back the branches pretty hard I’ll get the ramification close in to the trunk. That’s the way to properly develop this bonsai.
I continue to be pleasantly surprised by this Swamp maple. Assuming nothing bad happens, I’ll update you later in the growing season.
by Zach Smith | May 25, 2019 | Care, Elms, Potting, Pruning, Styling, Water Elm, Wiring
When we found this Water-elm last August (2018), I knew it was going in my collection. I had lost a similar specimen back in 2014. There’s something about those two trunks!
Today (5/25/19) it was time to style and pot this tree. Most of the bonsai is there; I just had to “find” it.
That nice branch on the right-hand trunk came with the tree. I want to keep it, but it has to be brought down some and then chased back to get the foliage closer to the trunk.
Here I’ve trimmed the foliage back a good bit. The branch is still over long, but I’m hoping to get back-budding on it so I can cut it back even further. I’ll know in a couple of weeks.
Moving over to the left-hand trunk, I wired a low branch and positioned it. Then I removed some small branches on the inside of both trunks. In a twin-trunk bonsai, branches should not be left growing on the inside of the trunks. This is not horticulturally sound, and usually doesn’t make the tree look any better either.
More clearing out of unusable branches on the insides of the trunks.
While I have a complete crown on the right-hand trunk, I don’t on the left-hand trunk. So I’ll have to make one. I have two nice leaders at the top of the trunk, so here they’ve been wired and positioned.
The right-hand crown was way too bushy, so I removed a lot of the foliage and did some strategic pruning to open up the structure.
The final step was potting the tree. I think this gorgeous Lary Howard oval really goes well with it.
The tree is a little right-hand heavy in the apex, but allowing the left-hand crown to fill out is going to shift this to a more balanced condition. It will also help to chase back that low right-hand branch some more.
I’m very excited about this Water-elm. By next year, it should be just about show-ready.
Let me know what you think.
by Zach Smith | May 16, 2019 | Bald Cypress, Care, Chinese Elm, Styling, Wiring
This is a run of the mill Bald cypress seedling (about 3 years old in 2017) that I decided to play around with in July of that year. How about a windswept cypress, I thought? So I wired it from bottom to top and stuck it in a Byron Myrick oval I had on hand. The base of this tree is about 3/4″ at the soil, and it’s about 22″ tall.
A couple months later I decided to turn the tree around. Now this does not make for an awe-inspring bonsai, no matter which way you turn it.
The thing to keep in mind, however, is that time does every bit as much to make a nice bonsai as we do. This doesn’t mean we don’t have to employ sound design principles. What it does mean, however, is that while you’re employing sound principles (and maybe an unsound principle here and there), the tree gets older. Unless you do something to harm the health of your specimen, it is going to get older just as surely as you are. More age is never a bad thing in bonsai.
So here, in 2018, I’ve performed the master stroke of eliminating extra branches. Only kidding. There’s no mastery in that stroke. It’s what’s called trying to figure out what this tree ought to be. The tree, I hasten to add, remains silent the whole while.
Okay, here we are in May of 2019 and I’ve discarded that whole windswept idea. Does that mean you can’t have a windswept Bald cypress bonsai? Not at all! I just think that this quality material is not suited to it. As a flat-top starts to take shape, this tree looks a lot better.
Here’s an important detail. Notice in the photo above that one of the crown leaders is crossing your field of vision and sweeping back toward the right. This is simply a vestige of that original windswept concept. In this photo, I’ve moved it back into a harmonious position.
But … there’s still something not quite right with this specimen (though it’s gotten a lot better).
And this is it. The trunk was configured in what is called the “C” shape, which is a very difficult trunk shape to work with (sort of like the “S” curve Chinese elms I despise). So I had to correct this problem. Now the tree actually looks like something with a future, even though it’s been made from quite ordinary material. At five years’ age, and the trunk base now at 1″, only time and some proper technique are required to make this a very nice bonsai.
Let me know what you think.
This tree is available for someone who’d like to continue its development going forward. The price is $175 delivered, and it goes to the first one to email me about it.
by Zach Smith | May 13, 2019 | Care, Potting, Styling, Vines, Wiring
I lifted this Trumpet vine, Campsis radicans, in June of 2017. Why not go straight to a bonsai pot with it? While this is not a good idea most of the time, vines are hard to kill and are reliable at producing roots.
Here’s the tree a year later. The growth has been good, and it’s shaping up into a nice upright tree form.
So I decided the pot was not quite right for this specimen for a couple of reasons: one, it’s a personal piece in my collection, the tree not necessarily; and two, I felt it was a bit “heavy” for the composition. So I picked out another pot and lifted the tree to transplant it. What did I find coiled up in the pot? Well, it’s not a snake though it sure could pass for one. This is about two years of Trumpet vine root growth. It all had to go.
Here’s the tree in its new home, a fine Lary Howard oval. This pot is a lot “lighter” than the previous one, which I think complements the graceful trunk line much better.
Now we wait and see if the root surgery was a success.
I spotted this specimen recently, growing in a tangle of weeds, Monkey grass and oak saplings. What could you make out of this?
Ah, there’s the future bonsai!
A few weeks later, the vine is re-establishing itself. I trimmed off the stubs that weren’t needed, giving me a perfect trunk line.
Now it’s easy to see where this one is going. It has nice trunk taper and movement, and I already have a start on the leader and branches. I think I’ll end up keeping this one for myself.
by Zach Smith | May 12, 2019 | American Elm, Care, Elms, Potting, Pruning, Styling
Every tree you work on will eventually reach a state where it’s got to go into a bonsai pot. Sometimes we delay doing so, and while that’s okay you don’t want to push any tree too far or you risk decline and, of course, the D word.
This American elm, Ulmus Americana, has grown from a bare trunk to this state in just two years. True to the species, it’s grown like a weed and requires frequent attention. And so, out of self-defense, I decided to put it in a bonsai pot so it won’t annoy me as much (only kidding, but you know you have some trees that demand a lot more attention than others).
While today’s work mostly consisted of trimming back the rampant growth, a little wiring was in order. The lowest left branch has been allowed to grow out, and still needs more in order to thicken, but it also need some movement in it. Hence the wire.
In this photo you can see I’ve started pruning back. Whenever you prune your trees, you have to do a little strategic thinking. You also have to be willing to sacrifice having the tree look good now in order to make it look better later. This is one of the tougher things we have to do as bonsai artists, but we owe it to our trees to make them just as good as we possibly can.
After still more pruning, and I wedged up the pot a little in order to see the potting angle better. The tree was too slanted in the pot.
This is a vintage pot I’ve had now for about 30 years. It was created by the late Richard Robertson of Rockport Pottery. I bought most of my pots from him when I first got into bonsai seriously.
Time to rustle the tree out of its nursery container. Plenty, plenty of roots. This sort of root density is typical of elms (this is two years’ worth). I also rediscovered some nice radial roots I’d forgotten about when I buried them in the pot.
And this is where the tree and I ended up today. Once growth has resumed, I’ll be able to judge how long it’ll take to finish out the work on it. My guess as of now is about two years to showable condition.
By way of stats, the trunk base is 2″ and the tree will finish around 22″ tall.
Let me know what you think of this American elm bonsai.
by Zach Smith | May 11, 2019 | Bald Cypress, Care, Pruning, Styling, Wiring
You may remember this Bald cypress forest from my recent blog about it. I had replaced two of the trees and added another two. Those new additions are now growing, so today seemed like a perfect time to do some work on the taller specimens.
First order of business: take off all the wire.
Next, the center tree gets trimmed.
Now the larger specimen on the right.
The larger specimen at the left of the planting was the most overgrown. It just had two many branches in the crown, so these need thinning out and trimming.
This tree also needed some help in the apex. I’m using the flat-top style for the large trees in this forest, so a little wire helps with the future design.
A final bit of trimming for the day, and that’s all for now.
I really like this BC forest, and I’m looking forward to seeing it develop. What do you think?
