by Zach Smith | Jul 23, 2017 | American Elm, Care, Elms, Ficus, Styling, Yaupon
Just because a there’s not much to a bonsai, doesn’t mean there’s not a lot to that bonsai. Take the case of the shohin specimen – a bonsai that is less than 12″ from the soil surface to the tip of the apex. In terms of mass, there’s just not a lot to a shohin bonsai. But in terms of what the bonsai is intended to be – that is, a representation of a large, mature tree in nature – it’s amazing what a shohin bonsai packs into those 12″. Even more amazing is how this is accomplished with no more than a handful of branches.
Today was a rainy day almost from start to finish, so I puzzled around for what I could do outside in the rain. I settled on lifting a Dwarf yaupon – more on that in the near future – and taking a couple of photographs of shohins I’ve been working on in recent days. I think they’ll end up being awesome bonsai. And packing that awesomeness into a very small space.
I’ve been growing this American elm, Ulmus americana, in the ground for the past few years to increase trunk size.
I’ve cut it back a couple of times, planning on a standard grow-and-chop development of the tree into a nice size pre-bonsai or bonsai. Well that’s the normal route you’d take, and so would I.
But recently I decided to see if I could make a smaller bonsai out of this one for a change of pace.
On June 24th I lifted, trimmed, carved, and potted this little guy. The leaves on it are the ones it came out of the ground with. For those of you familiar with American elm, at least from my writings, I have declared the species “King of Leaf-size Reduction.” In the wild, left alone to grow rampantly, they will produce leaves that are easily 5″ long. If you happen to take note of this while scouting for specimens to lift, you might consider the species unsuited to bonsai. Well, that’s certainly not the case. Once you get to the fine development stage of an American elm bonsai, you can expect to get the leaves down to under 1/2″ and even as small as 1/4″ in length. It’s truly amazing.
Which in this case means these leaves would be removed from the tree, with the expectation that I’d get a shoot in every leaf axil with smaller and of course more numerous leaves.
And here we are today, with a lot of new foliage (smaller, of course).
With a trunk base of 1.5″ and a height of less than 12″, I see a broom-form shohin American elm bonsai that will have a terrific structure before the end of this growing season. That’s how fast they grow.
Here’s a Green island ficus, Ficus microcarpa, that I potted up on June 23rd. I’ve grown very fond of the species, and as a result have introduced it to my offerings this year.
This little guy, with a trunk base of 1.25″ and a height of 7″, is another example of a shohin bonsai. It has exactly four branches, not including the apex.
To make this specimen into something believable, I have to get the design spot-on. I mean, when you think about it there’s a whole 7″ in which to make a tree-form emerge. Every branch has to do its part.
A month later, this shohin bonsai-to-be has put on a lot of new growth.
I removed a low branch that was coming straight toward the viewer, opening up the trunk better. I got a bud on the left side of the trunk above the low left branch, and it’s now growing out (that’s my fifth branch). The branch nearest the apex has extended, and I’ve wired and positioned it.
There’s more work to do, obviously, but by the end of summer I expect to have this design mostly done.
And finally, here’s the champion of the blog post, a Dwarf yaupon, Ilex vomitoria ‘Nana.’ I won’t relate the whole story of this specimen just yet – there’s another blog post to be written on it – but consider that the trunk base on this tiny specimen measures 1.5″ and it’s a mere 3″ to the tip of the leader at the left side of the tree. I can tell you this guy is destined for a semi-cascade style. It doesn’t look like much yet, but if you strain a little you can see where it’s going.
Shohin bonsai are ideal for those who have limited space for their pastime. They do present unique challenges, the most obvious perhaps being that they exist in a very limited quantity of soil. You’ll need to make provision for this if you decide to get into shohin. But I can tell you, it’s well worth the effort.
Do you grow shohin bonsai? If so, I’d love it if you’d share some of your experiences with us.
by Zach Smith | Jul 16, 2017 | American Elm, Bald Cypress, Elms, Potting, Styling
Don’t be alarmed. I promise not to wax lousy with philosophical babble about bonsai. But I do want to try and convey is how I see the art and pastime, and hopefully I’ll hear from you so we can compare notes.
As most of you know, I got passionately into bonsai almost 30 years ago. I was determined to use the native species that grew where I live, figuring if they didn’t survive bonsai training it could only be my fault. I’ve pretty much stuck with this niche since that time, and I’ve had my successes and failures.
Being in the bonsai business means I’ve had a lot of trees come into my possession and go right back out again. Like a flowing river, I suppose. I don’t mind; I really enjoy the business. I love being able to provide great raw material, and designed bonsai and bonsai-in-training to clients all over. And it’s given me a lot more trees to work on.
I figured out years ago that what I enjoy best is bonsai design, that is, taking a piece of material and creating from it a representation of a mature tree in nature. I’ve written before about all of the factors that go into achieving this goal: proportion, composition, forced perspective, complementary elements, and so on. Plus add to this that the subject of the artwork is alive, grows in a way that we’re intent on altering, has certain biological needs that are not fulfilled by its living in a shallow, small container, and is subject to attack by all manner of pests and diseases while we manipulate its shape to suit our vision of it. It’s nothing short of a miracle that we can even hope for a positive outcome.
Here’s one example of this seemingly impossible mission, my big Riverflat hawthorn. Today I gave it a light trimming to restore its silhouette and remove crossing branches. This tree has a 3″ trunk base and is about 30″ tall, and fits the category of large bonsai. I’ve been training it now for eight years. I personally think it’s wonderful. It really does look like a mature tree in nature, which of course is the goal of bonsai.
Today I also made this American elm bonsai-to-be. The trunk base is somewhere between 3/4″ and 1″ in diameter (depending on how high it’s ultimately potted), and the tree will probably be 14″ tall when done. This is not a large bonsai, nor is it a shohin bonsai. It’s just one of those in-between trees that has (I’m convinced) a lot of potential down the road. The emphasis here is on “down the road.”
But here’s the thing. I got just as much pleasure in making this ordinary bonsai-to-be as I did in the refining trimming of my much more impressive Hawthorn bonsai. If I hadn’t told you how small this tree is, you might have thought it was much bigger: after all, American elm leaves can get as big as 5″ long. So size was not really a factor here. It was all about the designing and potting of the tree, making the composition by choosing the elements of tree, pot, ground cover, and so on. I can see art in this rather ordinary elm specimen. Do you?
Now for a real challenge! I’ve done my share of growing Bald cypress from seed, and this is one example of a specimen started from seed a few years ago. Last year I tried to grow a bunch in standing water, but that experiment really went south. So I ended up potting the trees into gallon containers and leaving them alone. This one grew in such a way that I could chop to create taper, but otherwise it had ended up shaped like a bow. Really ordinary material. In this photo you can see it without its foliage, which I stripped off in order to work on it.
In this photo you can see the big flaw in this specimen.
It just bows over, and that’s no design feature! But not to worry. Wire can fix many things.
So after a few minutes of really enjoyable wiring and shaping and trimming, followed by potting up the little guy, here’s what I came up with. Do Cypresses grow as windswept specimens? Well, I can tell you from living in Hurricane Katrina Land that there are many examples of Live oaks along the Gulf Coast that ended up this way, so I have no problem making a Bald cypress with this design. One thing’s for sure, if I don’t like it I will get trunk buds that will give me a more traditional design if I choose to change it.
This one was fun as well. I know from experience that Bald cypresses mature quickly in a bonsai pot. Within a couple of years, the trunk is going to take on a grayness that hints of age even in a small specimen. As I work on the branches, they’ll begin to make the tree look like more than what it is now. This Bald cypress bonsai is about a five-year project to something really nice, despite its humble beginnings.
The point of all of this, I suppose, is to make a clear distinction between bonsai as a spectator sport and as the active working of trees and pots into artistic designs. I don’t mean to minimize bonsai displays in club and other sponsored shows, so don’t get me wrong. But that’s the very temporary result of all of the design work that encompasses many years of effort and vision. And that, for me, is where bonsai is at. Bonsai is 95% vision, sweat, work, setbacks, and more work, and about 5% kicking back and saying or thinking, “Man, that looks awesome!”
That’s my take. What’s yours?
by Zach Smith | Jan 15, 2017 | American Elm, Care, Elms, Pruning, Styling
All of us have ordinary material hanging around on our benches. What I mean by ordinary material is the not-hundred-year-old masterpiece-in-the-making stuff. I’m a great proponent of working with ordinary material. As I like to say, it’s hard to mess up really outstanding material (though it can be done); but one of the most fun challenges in bonsai is taking a really ordinary, nondescript piece of material and making something nice out of it.
Well, it doesn’t get much more ordinary than this American elm, Ulmus Americana. I’ll tell you the brief history of it. About three or four years ago, I collected an American elm sapling with a trunk base of about an inch. American elm is easy to collect, but for some reason this one died back to near the base of the trunk. I tossed it off the bench and into the “don’t care if you die” section of the nursery. Dutifully it trooped on, throwing some basal shoots that grew a little bit that first year. It hung in there the next year, and by the third year I decided I’d wire the two shoots and put a little movement into them just for laughs. There wasn’t much to lose, after all. I had some extra bench space, so it got promoted off the ground.
This past year I let the tree run some more, and it gained strength as you can see by the two vegetative shoots coming off the base and apex of the two trunks, respectively.
Today I decided to have a little fun with this survivor. I took off everything that didn’t look like a graceful twin-trunk American elm bonsai-to-be, wired it out and here it is. There’s no branching on the main trunk, but there are dormant buds on the trunk that will emerge come spring. I think this guy may turn into something one day. What do you think?
I’m inclined (no pun intended) to think the above design will work best, but I wanted to see how straightening the main trunk might change the appearance. What’s your take on it?
The key takeaway from this post is that you may have any number of ordinary pieces of material hanging around on your benches waiting for some styling magic. You’re the magician. The main thing is to work on them. Not all will turn into exciting bonsai, but as you gain experience you’ll find that you can make just about anything better. Think of what this will mean for your awesome trees.
by Zach Smith | Dec 11, 2016 | American Elm, Care, Collecting, Elms, Hackberry, Sweetgum
I’ve written often about developing bonsai from the ground up. Today, following our first couple of freezing nights for the year, we warmed up enough to make working outdoors pleasant. Here are a few bonsai-to-be that I’ve been growing in the ground for a while. Today it was time to do the next round of chopping.
Here’s an American elm, Ulmus Americana, that I’ve been growing for a few years from a volunteer. American elm grows quickly in the ground if left alone to grow. From a seedling it grew strongly in the typical upright fashion. Last year I chopped it back hard – you can see the chop point in this photo – and then selected the strongest leader and put some wire on it in order to create just a little movement in the trunk. Then I just left it alone; I did remove the wire once it started to bite.
Here’s the tree from another angle, after I cut off the other leaders that had emerged from the chop point. I could have left multiple leaders on this tree and grown it in the classic “vase-shape” style of the American elm in nature. But instead I opted for a more typical informal upright style.
Now, as you can tell this new leader loses it taper pretty quickly once it leaves the original chop point. This is all right – I needed the leader to thicken sufficiently to produce a nice tapering transition. But if I don’t chop the tree again now, I’ll lose that transition.
I left the leader extra-long here, but it is cut back enough to prevent loss of taper. Next spring I’m going to get buds all up and down the leader, at which point I’ll select one and cut the excess off. For now I’ve done all the needs doing.
The trunk base is 1.5″ and the new chop is at 8″ from the soil. When I cut back again next year the new chop point is going to be around 4″ from the soil.
I’ve shown you this Sweetgum, Liquidambar styraciflua, before. This past year I chopped back the main trunk line to about 12″ from the soil, and allowed a low branch to take off in order to thicken the base. Boy, did that work! I got a base of 3″ by doing this, and the new leader literally took over the tree growing about 8′ tall. We’ve reached a point, however, where I had to put a stop to this. By allowing the new leader to continue growing, the main trunk line would begin to weaken and could possibly die. So today I felt it was a good time to eliminate the sacrifice trunk.
A closeup of the trunk base, from the other side.
This is a very important photo. If you’ll look at the point where the trunk changes color from gray to green, you’ll notice just below that point there’s a circular bit of wood that forms a ring below the green part (which is the new strong trunk I need to get rid of). This is the equivalent of a branch collar. For those of you familiar with arborist work, when large branches are removed from trees they’re always cut just beyond the branch collar. Why? Simply to preserve the sap flow from the roots up past the branch. If you remove the lower part of the branch collar, you run the risk of killing off part of the trunk below the collar. In the case of this Sweetgum, I could kill all of the roots below this leader. So I’ll be careful to avoid this when I chop.
And here we are, in just a few minutes. Now I’ve got a great tapering trunk line on my Sweetgum. The original chop on this specimen was at 12″, so with a 3″ trunk base I can finish out this specimen at 18″ and have a perfect base to height ratio.
I don’t plan to lift this specimen until next May. I’ll post a follow-up at that time.
I collected this Hackberry, Celtis laevigata, in 2012. To be honest it was pretty ugly, more so when I got it home. But there’s always hope. So I planted it out a few years ago and just let it get established and start to take off. It’s been a few years, but I finally got strong growth in a leader and I’m beginning to think there may be something to this specimen after all – in a few more years.
A shot from the other side. Doesn’t look like much, does it?
Just a quick chop later, I think 2017 may see this specimen begin to look like wanting to be a bonsai some day. It’s going to take several more years, but that’s just part of the fun. Patient work. Grow and chop. Grow and chop.
And finally, the tree from another angle.
This specimen has a 2.5″ trunk base and has now been chopped to 8″ above the soil surface. In the spring the leader is going to push a number of buds, which will allow me to choose the next leader for growing out.
by Zach Smith | Jul 31, 2016 | American Elm, Care, Chinese Elm, Elms, Pruning, Styling, Water Elm, Wiring
There’s nothing like developing a bonsai. Sure, we all have or want “finished” trees in our collection for sheer viewing pleasure, but no destination is fun without the journey to get there.
We’re well into the depths of summer now, and my trees have put on a lot of spring and early summer growth. For material newly in development, it’s time to finish up the first phase of their journey and get them ready for completion of year one. This is a combination of techniques, involving unwiring and rewiring and trimming. These won’t all be done at the same time, even on a given tree. You’ll find that your branches will develop at different rates. You’re likely to remove the wire from your new leader before any of your branches, since that’s where the strongest growth is almost certain to be. And as the weeks roll on, you’ll remove wire successively until it’s all off – at which point it’s time to put wire back on most of those branches.
Here’s one of the big Water-elms I’ve been showing you. From trunk buds this April, here we are with tremendous leader and branch growth in less than three months. At this point I’ve removed all of the wire from the branches; a new round or wiring is coming soon. The wire was removed from the new leader a few weeks ago; it’s been trimmed a couple of times now and I’ve applied new wire to get the shape I want.
And after a good trimming. When you’re building your branches, you want to create the taper that mimics the taper of the trunk by growing and cutting back in stages. Now, these branches are a bit long even though they’ve been trimmed back pretty hard. With water-elm I know this will work fine. In the next year I’ll have much thicker branches, and they’ll have nice taper.
Size really doesn’t matter when it comes to developing bonsai. Even in a small tree, you go through the same stages. Now, there is one significant difference to be aware of when working with small material in development. Though the process of creating the crown of the tree is more or less the same, in the small bonsai it represents a much bigger part of the tree. This means you have to get it exactly right!
Here’s a small Chinese elm I’ve been working on this year. The trunk base is only 1″ near the soil and it’s less than 10″ to the trunk chop, meaning the finished height of this tree will be not more than about 12″. Contrast that with the Water-elm above, which will end up 30-32″ tall. Now, I will need to do a good job on that tree’s apex, so don’t misunderstand my point. It’s just that the small bonsai has to pack a lot into a very small space.
Here’s the next stage in this small bonsai, six weeks after the shot above. Notice how nicely the leader thickened up – so much so that the wire is no more. Notice that I’ve already got some ramification on the branches. Great progress!
One more thing to notice is that I cut the new leader a couple of internodes too long. This is to ensure I don’t have a problem with rebudding. I’ll get a new shoot in each of the leaf axils on the shortened leader. I plan to pick the lowest one, because that will ultimately produce the best tapering in the trunk. But I didn’t cut to the lowest node at this time because I didn’t want to risk the new leader drying out and dying.
This American elm is similar in size to the Chinese elm above. Here we are in early July, with a branch set wired and a new leader doing its thing. Doesn’t look like much at this stage, does it? Oh, it’s got a nice lower trunk, and you can see the potential. But it’s just an early stage bonsai in the making with a lot of miles left to go.
And four weeks later, here’s where we are. Nice growth in the leader, which will need to be even shorter than I’ve trimmed it once I get new buds. The wire has been removed. I don’t yet have any ramification in the branching, but that’s just a matter of time. For now, I need to continue to build the rest of the trunk of this tree and the apical branching.
Bonsai development is all about simple steps. As long as you do the right one at the right time, it’s pretty much like A-B-C.
by Zach Smith | Jan 25, 2016 | American Elm, Care
It occurred to me that the blog I wrote yesterday on the American elm, Ulmus Americana, I lifted, potted and styled wasn’t as helpful as it could have been. For less experienced artists who sometimes struggle with making design decisions, I wanted to explain in more detail my thought process as I studied and then worked on this piece of material.
Let’s start with the tree after lifting and washing the roots. When you look at a piece of material like this, you sort of know there’s a bonsai in there somewhere but you may not be quite sure where it is (meaning “what do I cut off and what do I keep, and why?”). We always work our way from certainty to uncertainty. What this means is, in pretty much every tree you select to work on you know for sure some things about it even if you don’t know everything about it. In the case of this one, I know several things without even settling on the ultimate design. Here they are: the branches are all too long and will need to be cut back to the right silhouette; the lowest branches have to go, there’s no place for them in my ultimate design; the root base needs to be cut flat, taking advantage of the best set of radial roots present; the original leader on this trunk, now dead, needs to be cut off and its base carved out to make the crown look realistic.
What I don’t know, though I have something of an idea, is what my finished branch set is going to look like (and how well the finished product will be). But that’s okay. We always begin with what we’re certain of, and work our way toward uncertainty. What usually happens is that things start clearing up once the work begins.
This next photo is a flash-forward of sorts. You can see I’ve removed the branches that don’t have any part in the final design, as indicated in the photo above. I’ve trimmed back all of the branches to a silhouette that makes sense when compared with the trunk’s thickness, height and taper. And of course I cut that root base flat and potted the tree.
Now, studying the new bonsai in the making I find I suddenly know more. The confusion cleared up, you might say. There are branches on this tree that attract the eye and make it linger. Not good. Something has to be done. In this style of tree, I need the branches to form what might best be termed a “fan-shape” from bottom to top. This means the lowest branches lie the most horizontal, and as you work your way up the tree they get more and more upright until you reach the crown. And that means it’s time to wire this specimen and put those branches where they belong.
Here’s the result. Now the tree is designed, and the design is balanced and harmonious. When viewing the tree there’s nothing that attracts and arrests the eye.
