Elms | Bonsai South

Fall Color And Reflection

by Zach Smith | Dec 2, 2017 | Bald Cypress, Care, Chinese Elm, Elms, Oaks

As the year draws to a close, it’s nice to spend some time reflecting on this year’s growing season and how it impacted our bonsai. Was it a good year? What new things did you learn? What surprises (good or bad) popped up? It’s for sure that you never stop learning in the wonderful art and hobby of bonsai. Bonsai South has had a great year, and thanks to all of you who helped make it that way. I’m really excited about 2018, which should be even better. Watch for new collected trees early next year. So we don’t get too much fall color here in the very Deep South, so it’s always super nice to see something among my bonsai. Here are a few trees that have over-performed (even if only a bit).

Cedar Elm - Ulmus Crassifolia

This Cedar elm, Ulmus crassifolia, is living here until it heads off to a client next spring (2018). Isn’t the color delightful?.

Chinese Elm - Ulmus Parvifolia

This Chinese elm, Ulmus parvifolia, has been in development a few years now. I’m working on building out the crown, and making good progress. I’m a couple of years away from getting it to look right. This tree has had a somewhat tough year in 2017, coping with a bout of black spot. It’s a fairly common problem with Chinese elm, but not too hard to manage. Most of the leaves are off the tree now, but I have some attractive yellow ones still left. They’ll be gone within a week.

Bald Cypress - Taxodium Distichum

This tree produces a really lovely “glowing” rust color in the fall. There’s not a lot of foliage on this one, but you can’t argue with how attractive it is. As with the Chinese elm above, this one will be bare within a week.

Willow Oak

Finally, here’s Rip Van Winkle, my late-budding Willow oak (Quercus phellos). I left it alone this year to grow out, as it appeared to be sluggish. Hopefully it will have regained all of its strength by the 2018 growing season. I got some unexpected color from it, so thought I would share.

Did You Enjoy?

I hope you’ve had a great bonsai year, and that your trees are thriving. Remember we’re always here to help out however we can!

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The Learning Never Stops – Here Are A Few Survivors

by Zach Smith | Nov 11, 2017 | Bald Cypress, Crape myrtle, Elms, Potting

I do all sorts of things with trees, some good and some bad but all with the best of intentions. The ultimate goal is a great bonsai that really makes you think it’s a real tree. My preference is to speed up the process as much as possible. Here are a few examples of trees that (so far) have survived my good intentions.

You probably remember this Cedar elm, Ulmus crassifolia, from a couple of weeks ago. I was trying to decide which pot worked best, and most of you picked this one. Last weekend I took the plunge and slip-potted it. It doesn’t seem to have minded at all.

Here’s another victim of fall slip-potting, a nice Bald cypress (Taxodium distichum). As with the Cedar elm, it didn’t mind a bit. Not even the slightest protest.

Here’s a Crape myrtle, Lagerstroemia indica (purple flowers), made from a cutting this year. What I like about it is the neat movement in the trunk – which was originally nice movement in a branch I pruned off of another bonsai and rooted. That got me to thinking literati.

I had this neat small pot lying around, so after some quick pruning and wiring and a lot of root-pruning, voila! A very small literati Crape myrtle. I don’t know yet, but I suspect it’ll come through fine.

Happy Halloween From Me And The Dragon

by Zach Smith | Oct 31, 2017 | Care, Elms, Pruning, Water Elm

Today’s Halloween, and Halloween is my birthday, so I took the day off and it turned out to be a perfect day to do some work on the Dragon, my super-duper Water-elm (Planera aquatica). For those of you unfamiliar with this tree, here it is in “stick” form back in Summer 2015. A not-so-humble beginning – trunk base 5.5″ across, 42″ in length, nice “dragony” trunk.

Here it is back in July, after getting wired and growing and getting unwired and trimmed.

Here’s the first shot from this morning. The tree is developing right on schedule. But it does need to have the dead wood treated with lime sulfur. It’s mostly very durable, but I don’t want to see any insect damage.

After the trim and treatment. I’ll pot up this tree in the spring, once I have the custom pot in hand that I’ll be ordering soon. I also need to carve out the shari into the new apex. Easy stuff.

I caught a glimpse of this tree from another angle, and wondered if I had the front right.

I think there are definitely two options. This one seems a good bit more dramatic.

What do you think? Speak before it gets potted in spring!

It’s Getting Cold Tonight, Why Not Dream Of Elms?

by Zach Smith | Oct 28, 2017 | American Elm, Care, Collecting, Elms, Styling, Wiring

I’ve been hustling today to finish getting my greenhouse up and heated, so all those tropicals I just had to make this year will survive. It looks like a light freeze is headed our way tonight.

And this is turn means the weather has broken, so it’s just a matter of time till the leaves are off the trees. I don’t know if I’ll get any color this year, it’s not common here in the Deep South, but by year-end most everything should be bare.

I’ve had a good and fun year with elms, and truth be told they’re probably my favorite species to grow as bonsai with the exception of Bald cypress. Here’s an American elm, Ulmus americana, that I lifted in May of this year. Here’s its story. It’s been growing on its own as a volunteer on my property for probably eight or ten years, in a not-so-good spot. It just so happened to be growing in a partly-recumbent manner, and was perhaps ten feet long (tall). The trunk was 1.5″ across, so not a bad start for something. So it seemed clear to me that the something should be a raft-style bonsai. The recumbent section had some roots already, so I just chopped it to size and potted it up.

The photo above is dated 6/17/17. In just a few weeks the recumbent trunk had grown plenty of shoots. Those shoots would to be the trunks of my raft-style bonsai. And given how fast American elm grows, I was going to have to apply some wire before long.

Sure enough, on July 21st it was time to put some wire on. There were five trunks for sure, so they got wired and shaped. And back on the bench it went.

On October 1st, this thing had grown so fast I had to remove the wire from two of the trunks in order to keep it from biting in. I’d also gotten another couple of trunks to add to the raft, making a total of seven. I was really getting somewhere.

And here we are today. The growth is over for 2017, but you just can’t argue with the results of five months’ work. And you can’t help but dream of next year. I’ve got a lot of American elms I’m growing to size, so hopefully next year by summer I’ll have more to offer.

Just to close out this post, I’ll make mention of another favorite elm of mine, Cedar elm, which I’ve written about a lot this year. While all of my other elms are done growing, the Cedar elms continue to plug away. This is true even for specimens in the ground.

This one was looking pretty awful at the end of summer, with ugly leaves many of which had dried up; then the temperatures moderated a bit, and it decided to put on some fresh new growth. It could grow most of the way through November, if we don’t get a killing frost.

Can You Wire In Fall? Yes, You Can, Provided….

by Zach Smith | Oct 14, 2017 | Care, Elms, Pruning, Styling, Wiring

I often see the question asked, “Can I wire in the fall?” The short answer is, “Yes, provided….”

That sounds a bit evasive, but as with many things in the wonderful world of bonsai you have to be aware of qualifiers that may come with different species and situations. I have done my share of wiring in the fall. I usually do it early in the fall, because there’s a little growing season left for me. That’s one of the qualifiers. Wiring puts stress on your trees, even though it’s often not a great deal of stress. But the tree responds by producing new cells to replace any damaged when bending the branches. This is very important. If you live too far north, wiring in fall could result in one or more dead branches because there wasn’t any growth to allow them to recover. So that’s one of the qualifiers. Another of course is associated with species. Some maintain good vigor into fall, such as Bald cypress and Cedar elm, and some don’t. Winged elms do not. Sweetgums do not. Hawthorns do not.

I wrote about this Cedar elm, Ulmus crassifolia, back in September. Collected in late April, it was slow to recover but eventually really gained strength. And it’s still growing! So today I figured it might just be time to take advantage of a fall wiring opportunity.

First of all, here’s a photo showing the extra growth the tree has put out in just a month – a fall month, at that! This is always a good sign. It means you can work on the tree without too much concern about causing harm.

The first order of business today is to remove the dead stubs.

A few minutes later, this is what I’ve got. I think the tree is already looking better. Notice how chopping the main and left-hand trunk shorter is going to improve taper. So it certainly wasn’t a bad thing that they suffered dieback.

The right-hand trunk died back to the base. Fortunately, a nice shoot emerged from near the base of this trunk that I can use to replace it. Moreover, it’s toward the back of the tree which is actually ideal.

Now that I have everything chopped back, it’s time to do some styling.

And here’s the basic plan. I think it’s pretty easy to see what this specimen is going to turn out like. It has a killer base, mature bark on the main trunk and a really nice design. I expect to be able to put it into a bonsai pot next spring.

Let me know what you think.

Oh, one last thing about wiring in fall. Check the wire you put on earlier in the season! If it hasn’t already happened, fall is the time of year when branches suddenly swell and cause the wire to bite in. So get that wire off if it needs it!

Back To The Drawing Board – A Nice Plan For This Cedar Elm

by Zach Smith | Oct 1, 2017 | Care, Elms, Styling

Remember to use the new Insider’s Club Form to post your questions and comments. This helps everybody learn and help and this is where I am now posting responses to your inquires and comments. (You’ll find the forum by scrolling up; it’s on your right.)

This Cedar elm (Ulmus crassifolia) I collected back in April just about croaked, but I took extraordinary steps and it appears to have pulled through. You can see why I worked so hard to save it. That shari running from near the base most of the way up the tree is 100% natural, and makes for a great feature worth designing around. But what’s the right planting angle?

This is another choice, which does have some positives going for it. But you just can’t see the feature as well.

I figured out that the tree had way too much slant in it, so I wedged it up for this photo. Still looks nice from this angle, but now I’ve pretty much lost sight of the shari.

Now I think I’m getting somewhere. There’s still a slant to the planting angle, but it’s not as drastic and makes for a more natural impression (in my opinion). I think this is something I can work with.

It’s not always easy to see the tree in these collected sticks and stumps, so I often take pencil and paper to the task to come up with a plan. This is one of those cases that really lends itself to this technique. Here’s the result.

It’s a masculine tree, of course, with that big gash ripped into it, so a rectangular pot is called for. In order to emphasize the lengthy shari, a narrower silhouette is in order too. Given the tree’s gentle taper, making it look taller is also called for. So I need the branches to remain close in to the trunk.

This was a great exercise. Don’t be shy about taking pencil and paper to any of your trees in development. You may be surprised at what you come up with.

Leave me a comment below and let me know what you think.

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