Bonsai Odds & Ends – Oak, Privet, Crape Myrtle

by | May 30, 2020 | Care, Crape myrtle, Most Recent, Oaks, Privet, Pruning, Styling, Wiring

bonsai odds & ends – oak, privet, crape myrtle

the bonsai files

Sneak Peak

This is the time of year to be doing rapid development of many of our trees, due to their robust growth. Here are a Water oak, a Chinese privet and a Crape myrtle that moved closer to “bonsai-ness” with a little pruning and wiring.

Bonsai Odds & Ends – Oak, Privet, Crape Myrtle

I collected this Water oak earlier this year, and once it got established it just took off. I’ve had to trim it some already. With that kind of strength, the obvious thing to do was go ahead and work up an initial design.

First order of business: make that horizontal chop an angle chop.

This is quick work with a trunk splitter and knob cutter. Notice how much better this tree looks already.

There aren’t but a few branches on this tree (plus the leader) to work with. Is that a problem? Not really. The trunk chop was made 7″ above the soil, and the tree has a base of 1.75″. If the finished height of the tree ends up, say, at 16″ then the first branch will be in an okay spot and the majority of the branches will end up in the new leader anyway.

How about that low branch? I’m not sure if this is going to make a workable design element, but if you look at trees in the wild (especially oaks) they tend to have both a main trunk line and secondary trunk lines that fork off the main trunk. This one may be too low, but then again if it turns into something unique then so much the better.

This is a small Chinese privet I was able to chop to a rapidly tapering trunk line (7″ above the soil). When you get an opportunity like this, you take it. I love well-proportioned shohin bonsai.

Fast-forward a few minutes, and this bonsai in the making is trimmed, wired and shaped. It’ll grow out quickly enough to allow slip-potting in the next month.

This is a white-flowering Crape myrtle I grew from a cutting several years ago. Due to living its entire life in a nursery pot, the trunk has just reached 1″ at the soil. But … it’s going to make a cool shohin specimen.

The big takeaway from this example is how you can use a sacrifice branch/leader to thicken the base of a specimen, while at the same time working on a design that will ultimately become your tree. But there’s a caution you need to be aware of. That leader is taking 90% of the energy generated in the roots, meaning the ultimate tree is getting very little. This means you have the risk of losing branches you may have worked on for years. So there are limits to what you can do with a sacrifice branch. If you use this technique, you have to keep a close watch on the entire tree.

Here we are post-sacrifice of the sacrifice branch. This little tree is now on its way to a more complete design, now that the energy is going to be redirected.

Incidentally, I’d like to encourage you to use a saw rather than concave cutters when removing larger branches from a Crape. Even with a very sharp tool, the wood will break rather than cut smoothly. This forces you to come back and carve even if you don’t plan to. The saw makes a nice smooth cut. Get yourself a Japanese bonsai saw, which cuts on the pull stroke. It’s an indispensable tool.

Willow Oak Progression

by | May 3, 2020 | Oaks, Progression, Willow, ZPC

Zach’s Personal Collection

willow oak

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Willow Oak

 

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Want to read a quick synopsis about each image on the carousel? Scroll down for more …

 

progression

history

Updates are in date order beginning with the first date Zach began documenting the progression.

03/17/2012

Willow oak, Quercus phellos, is one of the best oak species to grow as bonsai. It features willow-shaped leaves that reduce well in bonsai culture, to 1″ or less in length, it ramifies well and is very easy to maintain horticulturally.

This specimen was collected in the winter of 2012. This is the earliest photo I have, which was taken 3/17/12. The trunk is 4″ in diameter at the base, and it’s about 12″ to the chop.

What you can’t see in this photo is that the trunk base has been buried to protect the surface roots of the tree while they recover. But all in all, this is a tremendous specimen.

03/31/2012

Two weeks later, it’s clear this tree is going to make it.

Look at the strong growth of the new shoots.

06/02/2013

Here’s what a Willow oak can do in just over a year from lifting.

An amazing amount of growth, right?

06/08/2014

I’m not sure of the exact date of this photograph, but 2014 was the year of bitter cold and a lot of my trees came out late. This specimen always comes out late each spring, but always makes up for it as the growing season progresses.

04/03/2015

(1 of 3)

This is the beginning of year three for this specimen, and it’s time for the initial potting. Compare this photo with the first one above. We’ve come a long way!

04/03/2015

(2 of 3)

Now you can see what I meant by burying the surface roots.

Here the tree has been removed from its nursery container, the roots combed out and trimmed for the bonsai pot. This is just what you can expect from a Willow oak, in terms of root growth. What began as simply large roots chopped back is now a dense fibrous root system, exactly what is needed to ensure the health of a fine bonsai.

04/03/2015

(3 of 3)

And here’s the tree in its bonsai pot, a fine custom oval by Bryon Myrick.

The new leader needs to be reduced, and the branches need much further development. This can all be accomplished in a bonsai pot.

09/05/2015

 

Later in the season, the apex was reduced and regrown and there’s been more development in the lower branches.

06/25/2016

 

In spring of 2016 I decided to regrow the lowest right branch because I didn’t like the way it was designed. Sometimes you just have to start over. So I have two new branches emerging from the stump of the branch, which I think will make for a better design as it develops. Otherwise, this tree is coming along beautifully.

11/25/2016

Showing some fall color. I gave this tree a trimming while leaving the leaders long on the lowest right branch. They will be allowed to grow untrimmed throughout spring of next year, after which time I’ll cut them back hard to continue redevelopment of the branch. But isn’t this tree looking fantastic?

Next year the ramification should move to the next level over most of the tree.

04/06/2018

After repotting.

My plan is to continue developing the lower right-hand branch, plus improve ramification.

10/05/2019

The tree had different plans from mine. It dropped the low right-hand branch, and the spring growing season saw the tree struggle quite a bit. I failed to recognize the growth of shade where this tree was sited, due to some willows that have been getting bigger for the past few years. So I moved this oak into more direct sun. That did the trick. You can see how nice the foliage looks by the end of the season. Now to deal with the missing branch.

12/06/2019

Who’d’ve thought. The tree actually looks a lot better without that branch. It doesn’t comply with the standard bonsai “rules,” but frankly if the right-hand branch had survived in preference to the one across from it on the left, I’d have had a “compliant” bonsai that would have been much less dramatic. Notice how the additional carving has also added to the appearance of this specimen.

10/29/2020

The growth has ended for 2020, and now I’m just waiting for (hopefully) some fall color before leaf drop. The tree has done well this year, despite a few lengthy droughts which are always hard on bonsai. It powered on through, and produced a lot more ramification.

Next spring will be repotting time once again. I’m considering a change of pots, but we’ll see.

 

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Picture Day – Hawthorn, Oak, Crape Myrtle

by | Apr 26, 2020 | Care, Crape myrtle, Hawthorn, Oaks

picture day: hawthorn, oak, crape myrtle

the bonsai files

Sneak Peak

We’re wonderfully in the depths of spring, with warms days, cool nights and a nice breeze each day. Most everything is responding very well, so I thought it a good time to update photos of three trees in our collection. Two have been on the bench for almost a decade now, while the third has been in training for over 30 years. Nothing to sneeze at! But don’t be misled: just as it is for us, every tree you ever care for will have its ups and downs along the way. This used to frustrate me, but I finally came to understand that bonsai is not about perfect trees, it’s about working to perfect our trees while they work hard at growing the way they were created to grow. These two intentions are often at odds, but that’s the fun of bonsai, right?

Hawthorn, Oak, Crape Myrtle

picture day

This Riverflat hawthorn has just about reached full maturity as a bonsai. The biggest challenge it has posed in recent times was last fall, when an early freeze caught the tree with its still-green foliage on display. The result was an attractive though concerning bronzing of the leaves, which happened despite the tree being placed on the ground in a sheltered location. I was a little concerned, but once spring arrived the tree seemed to shake off the event. The good news is, I’m a year or two away from a repotting so the tree shouldn’t experience any new shock any time soon.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen an oak bonsai with a more attractive base than this one. I’m just always amazed whenever I look at it. Now entering its 10th year of training, this one has seen its share of challenging times but always bounces back. A couple of years ago I named it “Rip van Winkle,” for the simple reason that it’s one of the last of my trees to come out each and every spring. I don’t mind, though it would be nice if it came to the show sooner.

This year I expect to continue building ramification on this specimen. That’s one thing about any tree you develop. Trunk, branch structure, ramification. It pretty much always has to go this way. I had the trunk I needed when the tree came home in 2011. The branch structure took the past several years of painstaking work. Now it’s time to move into refinement. Notice the relatively large leaves. They need to be smaller, obviously. That’s a process I can start to work on this year, with the next step being to prune the new growth back pretty hard in about two more weeks. I’ll then get another flush of growth, along with the back-budding that will increase twig density and reduce leaf size. We’ll see how it goes.

This is the old Crape myrtle I’ve written about on a number of occasions. In checking Allen’s hand-written notes, training was begun on this specimen in 1986 after he and I collected it before that growing season began. It sure has come a long way.

This one had its most recent challenge in Winter 2019. We had had a warm snap, which is not unusual for late winter down here, and this tree decided it was time to start pushing buds. With a light freeze on the way, I thought nothing of leaving the tree on the bench. I’ve had plenty of experience with Crape myrtles, enough to know they are surprisingly cold-hardy. I expected this to extend to the new growth, especially considering that the sap in the emerging foliage should have enough sugar to lower its freeze point. Well, the sap did not.

So the new buds withered and dropped off, meaning the tree had to push a second round of first-round growth. That’s a setback, of course, but Crapes are pretty tough customers so I figured it would recover given time and not pushing it. I let it grow out last year, with only minor trimming and adding a little wire where needed. This year, I should be able to do some reshaping work toward summer. I’ll also remove any flowers buds, to ensure the tree doesn’t suffer any undue stress.

Working On A Couple Of Oaks

by | Apr 4, 2020 | Care, Oaks, Pruning, Styling, Wiring
Most everything is out now, including oaks. Even Rip van Winkle the Willow oak is finally pushing new growth.
I love American beech but hate trying to make bonsai out of them (beech and oaks are cousins, by the way). They have a single flush of growth each year, the leaves don’t reduce too much and they root slowly. What’s not to like, right?

Anyway, God help me but I brought home a couple last year because … well, I have no idea why. Check out this one. It had a couple of branches when I lifted it, which dutifully leafed out. It also produce some additional buds/shoots, but they didn’t survive winter. I know the roots aren’t that strong on this one, because it gradually laid itself over in the pot during the 2019 growing season. I pushed it upright earlier this spring, so that maybe it could gain some strength. But ugly. Ugly.
With noting to lose but a little time and cut paste, I decided today to chop the tree so I can see if it’ll backbud after the spring flush of growth. If it does, and if it ends up looking like anything in the tree family, I’ll post an update. Otherwise, it’ll just spend another year on the bench. (Isn’t the trunk nice looking, though?)
I’m pretty sure this beech is why I collected the one above (this one came first). it’s a very nice specimen, and it came with some branches to go with a killer trunk. I did a year two chop earlier in the season, and today I wired up the new leader I’m going to encourage. And that, as they say, is about it for this one. See you next year.
Here’s a big Live oak I collected several years ago. It struggled some last year, but this year it’s putting on some strong growth. Hurray! But there’s a problem with this specimen (at least one): it just doesn’t look “Live oakey” enough. Well, that’s nothing some big-gauge wire and muscle can’t fix.
As you probably know, the classic form of the Live oak is one of spreading down-sweeping branches that often touch the ground. the spread is often twice the height. Now, I can’t get any of the branches on this tree to touch the soil, but that’s okay. I can give the impression of the classic Live oak form. Here I’ve gotten the first two branches in a more compliant position (that stiff left one cracked a bit, but oaks heal very well).
And two more branches got the same treatment. I’m leaving the busy crown alone for now, hoping for more growth which will help thicken everything below it and make the trunk chop transition point smoother. I’m sure that in another four or five years it’ll be much closer to believable in appearance. Given that the trunk base on this specimen is 4″ across, I haven’t done too bad so far.

I’d love to hear what you think of today’s work.

Oaks Bud Late – Worth The Wait

by | Mar 21, 2020 | Care, Oaks, Styling, Wiring

This is a Water oak, Quercus nigra, that I lifted last year. It budded a bit high, but I decided to accept the challenge of making a nice bonsai from it. I love working with oaks, and you’ll see more of them in the coming weeks including several for sale.

This shot is from last October. Oaks grow quickly, even in a pot, so you can make a lot of progress in short order.

Here’s the same tree, earlier this month. I had worked the leader last year, and in this photo you can see it’s been cut back again for the next round of development. But my plan is to get it into a bonsai pot now, because I can complete the design in a bonsai pot and save time that way.
I think this Byron Myrick rectangle suits the tree nicely. I get a masculine vibe from it.
Oaks are among the last species on my benches to bud out in spring, but they’re well worth the wait. They also tend to ramify easily, as you can see in this photo. The only problem with this tree is that my first and second branches are on the “wrong” sides of the tree. But it’s common for trees not to give us the branch positioning exactly where we want it, so that’s where our creativity is vital.
This tree, pretty much from inception, was not destined to fit the informal upright mold. The first branch was just too high on the trunk. So with that understood, I think the best simple solution is to go with the so-called broom-form structure. This tree will make a great specimen of that style, which incidentally is the most common for all deciduous trees. To change the style of this tree will take some wire and bending.
And here’s the beginning of my solution. If you compare this photo with the one above, notice how the foliage masses on the first two branches are now less far apart visually. This is a technique you can use to change the appearance of your trees, namely, using the positions of the foliage masses rather than the branch emergence points to make the visual design work. In this case, I’ve brought more balance to the tree. Let me know what you think of this Water oak. I’m excited to see it develop this year, and I’ll post updates as the growing season progresses.

Bonsai Odds & Ends – Oak, Oak, Sweetgum

by | Dec 1, 2019 | Care, Oaks, Pruning, Styling, Sweetgum, Wiring

Here’s a nice smaller Water oak I started working on last year.  Water oak is quickly becoming one of my favorite species, featuring small leaves, short internodes and ease of ramification.  They are very happy in a bonsai pot.

This one budded fairly high on the trunk, but I’m going with what I have.  You can probably tell I’ve been through two rounds of leader building already.  That’s an indispensable process when you work with collected trunks.  Usually you’ll chop fairly low, 10-24″ depending on the size of the tree, then build the tapering transition and a third to more than half of the entire structure of the tree from nothing.  As you can see with this tree, you can make very fast progress.

Snip, wire, shape.  Now the next iteration of the trunk line of this tree has begun.

Incidentally, one of the nice features of Water oak is they often hang onto most of their leaves through winter.  Though certainly not as persistent as Live oaks, you could actually term them persistent-leafed. 

I haven’t published an update on my world-class Willow oak in a while.  Frankly, it had a tough spring and I had to give it some extra attention to get it back to good health.  My secret?  More sun.  Where I have my garden, there are some Willow trees growing and as you may know they grow super fast.  This has brought more shade to that part of the garden, including where I’ve had this tree sitting for a couple of years.  So the extra shade snuck up on both of us.  I relocated the tree to my Bald cypress bench, which is in full sun, and it responded by pushing a lot of good new growth.  We’re both much happer now.

Here’s the tree after a trim last month.  For those of you familiar with this specimen, you may notice I don’t have a low right-hand branch anymore.  Unfortunately (?), I lost that branch this year.  I also acquired some more dead wood.  But is that a bad thing?

Here’s the fall almost-bare look, which gives you a better idea of the new structure of the tree.  I’ve always been a little unhappy with the fact that I had more or less a bar-branch situation in the lower part of the tree.  Of course, the traditional view of things is you would want the low right-hand branch and not the left-hand branch above it.  Well, trees do what they want in the end.  I actually don’t mind this structure at all.  It’s not as unbalanced as you’d expect it to look, and that works for me.  It may have to do with the incredible basal flare on the tree.  I mean, it looks at least a hundred years old (I’d guess it’s about 60 or so).  So for my money, this specimen has enough gravitas to carry just about any design.

I worked on the dead wood some while I was doing a general pruning back.  Oaks have solid wood, of course, so the amount of punky stuff I had to remove was not that great.  I painted on some lime sulfur, and will follow with PC Petrifier in the coming week.

This Sweetgum has been in training for just over a year.  In the Progression I’ve posted, you can see the quick development including the potting that happened almost five months ago.  Now, with the leaves about off the tree, it’s easy to see what needs doing.

Young Sweetgum branches are very supple, so there’s not a big chance of snapping one if you do fall wiring.  Here I’ve put the branches back where they belong, in anticipation of spring.

It’s important to bear in mind, when doing the early development work on a Sweetgum, not to remove terminal buds in fall or winter from non-ramified branches.  This increases the risk of dieback, probably due to auxin withdrawal.  If the branch is ramified, meaning there are multiple terminal buds, removing one or two won’t hurt (just don’t remove them all).