by Zach Smith | Jul 9, 2016 | Care, Elms, Water Elm
There’s nothing quite like collecting trees during a heat advisory. This is where it’s over 80° at daybreak and only gets worse from there.
Alas, this is the time of year when it’s best to collect Water-elms (Planera aquatica), so you pretty much have to forge on through the heat, no pun intended.
We did well regardless, and here are a few examples that I hope will survive collecting.
Here’s a nice informal upright specimen. The trunk base is 2.5″ in diameter, and it’s chopped at 12″.
I love the trunk movement of this one. It splits off pretty low, so I kept both trunks. This is going to make a super bonsai. The trunk base on this one is 3″, and it’s 13″ to the tallest chop.
This is the hunky masculine winner for this trip. The trunk is 3.5″ and it’s 14″ to the top chop. I see an awesome broom-form specimen with this one.
All of these trees have terrific radial roots which have been cut back enough for their ultimate bonsai pot. In two weeks I should be seeing new buds if they come through all right.
If you don’t have a water-elm bonsai in your collection I highly recommend the species. They have beautiful glossy dark green foliage that reduces without any effort on your part, they ramify well and you can literally go from a collected trunk to a showable tree in three years. The bark exfoliates every few years on older specimens, which is another nice feature. They are not much bothered by pests and diseases, and you can’t overwater them as they can spend months completely submerged in the wild. There’s really nothing not to like about water-elms.
by Zach Smith | Jul 4, 2016 | Care, Elms, Potting, Styling, Water Elm, Wiring
Yesterday I posted some work I did on a nice collected Water-elm, Planera aquatica, that couldn’t work as a single bonsai. I basically sliced through the connected root, producing a twin-trunk specimen and a three-trunk raft. Today I did an initial styling on both. Here are the before and after photos of each:
I like all of the trees I style, but from time to time one comes along that really grabs me. This is one of those trees. It’s certainly not a huge specimen, the trunk base is 2″ and it’ll finish at 16″, but it’s just got that special something (at least for me). The Byron Myrick oval really complements this tree nicely.
This one required a good trimming to get the design started. The largest trunk had suffered some dieback, so I wired up a new leader and will let it run without any trimming for the remainder of the growing season. By next year I’ll have a nice “Three Amigo” raft-style bonsai or maybe something bigger depending on what I run across.
by Zach Smith | Jul 3, 2016 | Care, Elms, Potting, Water Elm
What’s wrong with this picture? I collected this raft-style Water-elm, Planera aquatica, last October. It’s not hard to find both clump-style as well as raft-style Water-elms, since the natural growth habit of the species is to produce basal shoots and grow in a shrub-like fashion. Most of the time we get rid of the low growth, but on occasion a specimen will stand out and make you want to see where it’ll go as a clump or raft.
In the case of this tree, I made one simple but significant error when taking it as a raft. Can you spot what it is?
Though it’s a little hard to see from this angle, the largest trunk in this group has some nice trunk movement while the smaller trunks are all dead straight. In all multi-trunk bonsai, you want there to be consistency in the growth habit of each of the trunks. If one is straight they should all be straight. If one has a nice flowing movement they should all have nice flowing movement. In this case, the smaller trunks just don’t reflect the character of the largest one.
What to do? Well, why not make two bonsai out of this group? So I sawed right through the base. Here’s what I got.
It’s easier to see the nice movement of the largest trunk, and also easier to see why the piece needed to be split. Now I’ve got something to work with.
Here’s the first bonsai-in-the-making from this piece of material. Once I had cut through the root base, I discovered a nice turn in the trunk and planted the tree accordingly. There’s good rootage most of the way around, but you can see the flat edge above where I cut through it. In order to induce roots I dusted with rooting hormone and installed some “magic moss” over the area in the pot. I call it magic moss because it doesn’t ever seem to dry out, and everywhere it grows in my pots roots tend to form beneath it. Once I get some roots in the cut area I’ll be able to complete the nebari of this tree.
I plan to do the initial styling on this tree tomorrow and will post the result.
Here’s the rest of the original piece, three main trunks along with a new shoot or two coming off the root base. I didn’t have a smaller tray so I used my vintage Richard Robertson rectangle. It doesn’t look half-bad, but I’m thinking I’ll see if I can find a companion raft-style piece during this collecting season to add to my new forest.
I’ve love to hear any comments you might have.
by Zach Smith | Jul 1, 2016 | Care, Elms, Pruning, Styling, Water Elm, Wiring
In an ideal world, we’d be able to do time-lapse photography of our bonsai starting with the bare trunk, then progressing through new shoots and first wiring, then sub-branching and unwiring and rewiring and ramification and apical development, all the way to show condition. The next best thing is the progression. I love progressions, because they show you just what can happen starting with a bare trunk (for deciduous trees) all the way through to the “finished” bonsai. They’re a great teaching/learning tool. Plus they can give a historical perspective on your trees.
Here’s a water-elm progression in photos. May 9, 2015 to July 1, 2016. No need for commentary.
by Zach Smith | Jun 25, 2016 | Care, Elms, Pruning, Styling, Water Elm, Wiring
It may seem at times that chaos reigns in bonsai creation, but the fact is everything we actively do requires attention to detail. I’ll be the first to admit that I use the “shearing” method of developing bonsai, at those times when it’s called for, but I can assure you that even when shearing a tree the details are not lost. It’s just that the work tends to go very quickly.
This Water-elm, Planera aquatica, was collected last October and will ultimately end up in someone’s collection. In the meantime, however, I can’t let it grow unstyled or frankly whoever ends up with it would have to more or less start over. So today it was time to make an important design decision and nudge the tree in that direction.
Here’s the problem with this tree, at this point in time. I’ve got a nice new apical shoot that’s been through its initial growth and has been cut back once. That’s well and good, but if you look closely the thing that stands out is how straight the new leader is. It’s ugly, in other words, and if allowed to continue growing it’s going to get longer and thicker and remain ugly.
Here’s the solution to this problem. Now the leader is not straight and uninteresting, it’s got some taper and a nice curve has been wired into it. It’s going to backbud right where I cut it, so I’ll be able to wire some additional branches in the new crown. I’ll allow the leader to run for a while, to thicken everything below it.
The bottom line is, paying attended to detail now will pay off nicely down the road. It’s something we need to do every time we actively work on a tree.
by Zach Smith | Jun 20, 2016 | Care, Elms, Styling, Water Elm, Wiring
I love bonsai progressions! I think they’re one of the very best learning tools we have, and with the advent of cheap, immediate, high-quality photography it’s hard to justify not keeping good records of your trees.
A couple of weeks ago I posted a video of the initial styling of my huge Water-elm, “Dragon.” Here’s the first appearance of this monster, late last October following collection in August. With a tree this size and enough room to grow, you’d expect it to literally take off and that’s just what it’s done.
Here we are in April, with tentative shoots just starting to push (at this time I’m still waiting for a bud to reappear near the chop).
And here we are, two weeks after the initial styling was completed. All of the shoots are being allowed to run, in order to thicken them up as well as to feed the tree. Remember, foliage is ultimately what feeds your tree. To be sure, you’ve got to have roots taking up water and nutrients, but without the “foliar factory” you’ve got nothing but a dying plant. So the next training activity for this specimen is removal of the wire when it starts biting in, which will likely be in another two or three weeks. Water-elms don’t have significant “shape memory” but they do have some. But another round of wiring should settle the issue of where these branches are going.
I’ll post updates on Dragon as it develops. For those of you who watched the video, you know my design plan. I should have a good start on it by season’s end.
