by Zach Smith | Apr 22, 2020 | Care, Maples, Pruning, Styling, Wiring
So I’m probably not the first person to use the term “Bon-science,” but on the off-chance I am then I’ll cheerfully stake my claim.
Swamp maple, or Red maple, or Acer rubrum, or A. rubrum “Drummondii” is a very fine species that grows from South Florida north to Canada, and west to East Texas down here and Minnesota up there. Many folks will tell you they can’t be grown as bonsai because of large leaves that don’t reduce. This is not correct. It is also said that even if you get the leaves to reduce the petioles stay long. This is also not correct. As you get the leaves to reduce, the petioles get shorter so the effect is quite nice.
Anyway, my multi-year experiment consists of collecting trees with a good soil ball and the roots that go with it, and retaining that native soil in order to prevent (however it happens) the top-down rot that has plagued me in years gone by. I’ve had some success with this, as I’ve reported in previous blogs. So I upped my number of candidates this year, just in case I’ve cracked the code. Here’s one of them, at the just got home “stick in a pot” stage.
Here we are two months later, in the kind-of-sad “I only have a right arm and it’s been wired and stuck out to the side” stage. Hey, every bonsai starts somewhere. Why’d I do this, you may ask? Just to keep that branch cool while other growth caught up. The last thing I needed was for that one to gain strength and get so thick I could no longer bend it. Pre-emptive bending, I suppose.
Here’s what a month will do for you, if it’s late-March to late-April and you have roots that need to express themselves. Lonely right branch has lots of friends now.
Wire applied, and I’ve got my first two branches on their way.
Then in one fell swoop I cut away most of the top of this tree. Why? Because I had the opportunity to shorten the tree a bit and make use of an existing branch that had already grown upward on its own. It happened to make a good continuation of the trunk line. Swamp maple exhibits apical dominance, as most trees do, so you typically get a bushy top that you have to fight while making the tree structure. Here I’ve taken out 90% of it in one chop. The tree will try to replace what I cut off. I’ll continue pruning and pinching most of it off while the lower branches gain strength. Sometime next year I’ll have a better balance than I do now, though the tree is never going to completely give up on the idea of getting taller. It’s just part of bonsai.
So my goal with this tree is to make a presentable bonsai out of it in 2020. From harvesting to stick-in-pot to designed tree to potted-up-bonsai. I’ll get some degree of ramification but not much in the way of leaf size reduction. But that’s okay. If I get two years ahead of the curve with this specimen, then my experiment will have been a success. The tree and I can then settle into the refinement phase of its life in a pot.
by Zach Smith | Apr 10, 2020 | Care, Elms, Maples, Pruning, Styling, Wiring
So here’s an update on one of the Boxelders I’m playing with. It’s got a very nice flush of spring growth. Some styling decisions and work need doing at this point in time. No surprise there. But that got me to thinking. Every tree we work on has to have its own design plan, whether we consciously think about it or not. Here’s a list of tasks that need doing now:
- Trim back overlong branches
- Trim or remove upward and/or downward pointing branches, or use them for directional changes
- Wire and position branches and/or sub-branches as needed
- Shorten new leader in order to build taper at the trunk chop transition point
Step one is to shorten overlong branches as needed. Here I’ve started that process, from the bottom of the tree upward.
Continuing upward, same thing.
Here I’ve wired and positioned branches, followed by shortening the leader. I took the leader back to two nodes. I’ll almost certainly get buds at both nodes, at which point I’ll take another internode off and use the one closest to the transition point for my new leader. This will help build taper and thicken the transition point.
Here’s a Winged elm, Ulmus alata, that I lifted from a field growing area back in January. While it’s not too well established yet, from a rooting perspective, it does have some shoots that need to be wired and positioned before they get too stiff the bend easily. So here’s the design plan for this specimen:
- Remove unneeded shoots
- Wire and position shoots that will be used in the design
- Set the tree aside and let it grow until the wire needs removal; then,
- Rewire and trim, as needed, developing branches
- Remove trunk chop stub
- Wire up new leader
- Carve lower trunk chop used for directional change
This is all I can do today. Now it’s back to the bench for this specimen, and waiting for signs of wire cutting into branches. I expect that will happen as early as late next month.
by Zach Smith | Mar 14, 2020 | Care, Maples, Pruning, Styling, Wiring
I’ve blogged about this Swamp maple before, most recently last fall. The plan at the time was in finding the right leader so that I could chop the trunk and start the serious design work. With the explosion of growth now on the tree, it’s time to take this next step. Now, I’ve written before about the difficulties I’ve experienced in keeping collected Swamp maples alive past two years. Recent experience in maintaining a central root mass without any washing seems to have completely changed this equation. I don’t have enough examples yet to be sure, but I’ve got several on the bench now to test the theory. But back to this tree. As with my first experiment, it should be all right to start styling in year two. Doing this the first time caused no problems at all.
Here I’ve begun making the trunk chop. I always work from the bottom to the top of the angle cut, using my trunk splitter to cut and then lever off sections of wood.
Note 1: I don’t attempt to chop at the bottom-most point of the angle cut; it’s common to do some damage during the rough-cut part of this work, so I leave myself some room to carve below and make things neat.
Note 2: What you see here is what you will almost always see when you angle-chop a trunk – some obvious signs of decay (the work of the microbes that do it, as evidenced by the discolored wood).
Here I’ve taken off most of the rest of the excess wood. Note that dark spot right in the middle of the trunk. This is not what I wanted to see; it denotes microbial activity and may run all the way to the soil. Will this kill the tree or cause permanent damage? Only time will tell.
I’ve finished the work on the angle cut now. It’s always best to carve your angle cuts as smoothly as you can, especially at the edges where the active cambium is. This will help prevent microbial attack.
This part was more fun. I’ve done some basic wiring of branches that could be positioned now. The lowest shoot on the right is too tender to wire now – they pop off very easily when brand new. So I need to wait until it hardens off. However … I also need to keep a close watch on how quickly it extends. While I need this shoot to be strong and to thicken up in order to produce the right proportions in relation to the trunk, if it extends too fast I’ll end up with my first node too far from the trunk. I need to keep an eye on this shoot, and be prepared to pinch the central leader out to keep this from happening. When the new buds extend from this pinch-point, I can let them run farther. When doing this, the second round of growth doesn’t typically overextend the internodal length. Let me know what you think of today’s work.
by Zach Smith | Mar 7, 2020 | Care, Elms, Flowering, Hawthorn, Maples, Potting, Styling, Water Elm, Wiring
Spring is gathering speed now, and most everything on my benches (beech and most oaks are usually last) is coming into leaf. Water-elms also lag, so I took the opportunity today to pot up a couple of small ones. This is another of the trees that came home last summer. Nice smaller specimen, 1″ trunk and destined to finish at 12″. As with small bonsai in general (and you should take this as a hard and fast rule), your tree will consist of fewer than a dozen primary branches in total. This includes the branches in the crown. So here you see I’ve made a design with only four branches (so far). There will be two to four max in the crown. And that’s it!
I think this Chuck Iker round is going to go perfectly with this tree. The root system was very good, considering the tree has only been on the bench for a few months’ worth of growth (last summer/fall).
And another small Water-elm, trunk base slightly larger than 1″ and again it’ll finish at 12″. Here I’ve got five primary branches along with the leader, so again a simple structure. (If you crowd your branching too much in a small tree, there’s no way to avoid the “shrub” effect. That’s not bonsai. Less is more.)
Another nice Chuck Iker round helps to make this tree.
Fun with Swamp maples continues. I collected a handful of nice ones this year, my goal being to see how well they hold up over the next few years. I’ve been encouraged by the last two I brought home. By keeping an intact root mass and avoiding completely cleaning the roots, it appears they don’t become susceptible to trunk rot. If this does prove to be the key to success, then you’ll see more specimens over the next few years. They really do have some nice characteristics, so I’m excited. Today I wired a single branch on this very tall specimen (18″ trunk with a 1.5″ base; I had one I blogged about the past couple of years that went on to a client; I’m trying to duplicate that design). Why wire one branch? It should help redirect energy elsewhere, especially to the many trunk buds you can’t yet see. I’ll need this branch in my design, and I don’t want it getting too thick too fast. I’ll also be pruning it later in the season, to activate the buds that appear at the nodes on the branch.
Finally, this Parsley hawthorn came out of my ground growing area earlier in the year. It’s exploding with growth, as you can see. That includes some shoots on the recumbent trunk that will make upright trunks to go along with the four I currently have. So I’ll let them grow without restraint for some time, possibly even all season. I do want variety in the trunk thicknesses, but I can control that as this tree develops. You’ve probably noticed that one of the two largest trunks leans a bit too much, making the design less harmonious than it can be. I’ll notch this trunk a little later in spring, bringing it more upright.
by Zach Smith | Feb 23, 2020 | Care, Elms, Flowering, Maples, Potting, Water Elm
I potted up this Water-elm last year. It’s a specimen from the 2018 collecting season, and since Water-elms develop so quickly I was able to move it along less than a year after it was first lifted. It’s a nice composition, but there’s one problem with it – the pot is just a bit too small. It’s starting to come into leaf, so today was the perfect time to repot into a more suitable container.
This was a pretty quick operation. The original pot and this one are both by Lary Howard; each is unique, but this one suits the tree better. I did have to do some light root-pruning to ensure the perfect fit, but the tree won’t care.
I was also able to lift the tree slightly in the pot, which shows the surface rootage better. Ramification is going to be the first order of business during this growing season. With Water-elms, I’ve found that grow and clip is the technique of choice once the original design is made by means of wiring and shaping. Occasionally you’ll need to do some wiring on a mature specimen, but it’s generally minimal.
This tree is available at our Water-Elm Bonsai page, if you’d like to take over the refinement work.
Sometime there’s more to the story. I started playing around with this Boxelder last year. I got a nice branch set in place, and carved down the trunk chop, and the tree went into dormancy like clockwork. Now the first signs of growth are on it, and since I really like the way it’s shaping up and since my expectations for it are firmly in check (it being a Boxelder and all), I thought I’d like to pot it up. Why not? The only problem was, I didn’t have a pot suited to it. Except … that pot the Water-elm was in looked like fitting this tree pretty well.
The tree had plenty of roots when I lifted it, so I’m confident it’s going to continue leafing out and not look back. I think the pot works very well with it. So I’ll give the tree some food and ignore it for awhile. Stay tuned for an update later in spring (assuming all goes well).
I got this Lantana from another collector last fall. It’s been in this homemade concrete training pot since I got it, but now it’s pushing new growth and today was the day it needed to go into a nice bonsai pot.
I think this Chuck Iker round just makes the tree. What do you think?
by Zach Smith | Dec 9, 2019 | Care, Maples, Pruning
I recently sold a Swamp maple I’ve been working on for three years. Among the very nice features of that tree was the fact that it didn’t start rotting from the chop down in year three, which had been my experience over the course of many years and many trees. I collected this specimen in January of 2019, and have done nothing to it except for fertilizing and watering. Benign neglect, along with maintaining an interior root mass that includes native soil, has been my approach. When I saw the amazing fluting of this tree’s trunk, I had to bring it home. It’s an uncommon feature of the species. If this specimen survives and thrives, I should really have something.
I’m going on the assumption that, with the tree now in dormancy, pruning won’t have any significant negative impact. That’s all I’ll do until next spring. You can see the stub I left when removing that weird branch shooting off to the right. The purpose of cutting the way I did is to ensure that I don’t expose the tree unnecessarily to pathogens that might enter at the site of a flush cut. The cut I made was outside the branch collar.
The rest of the pruning has been done. The tree still looks like barely more than a trunk, but there are trunks buds in strategic spots you can’t see as well as a couple of branches I should be able to use.
A couple more notes for today. After a lot of studying over the course of the growing season, I’ve finally spotted a suitable leader. And I know just where to re-chop the trunk when the time comes. The only question to answer is when? If not next year, then surely 2021.
Here’s a little bonus shot. I’ve been growing this Swamp/red maple from seed for the past few years. It’s been cut back a couple of times now to build trunk taper. I went ahead and potted it because I’m satisfied with the trunk base, which is right at 1″ at the soil, and it’s destined to remain a shohin size bonsai. I know it doesn’t look like much at this stage, but I’ve got all the buds I need to create an entire branch structure. So by next summer I should have a neat little Red maple bonsai.