by Zach Smith | Apr 1, 2017 | Care, Elms, Potting, Pruning, Styling, Water Elm
This Water-elm connected root bonsai-to-be was first presented last December. It had been separated from a larger specimen that did not match the remainder in style. So the idea was to make two bonsai out of it. This part was “parked” in a too-big tray, and allowed to grow out.
The two nights of 22° F were not kind to the left-hand part of this tree, so today I thought it would be fun to see what I could make out of the rest of it.
The first order of business was to separate the root where the dead part joined the live part. I used a hand saw to cut through.
Here’s another view of the little group, from what I envisioned as the ultimate front.
And here’s the group, removed from the pot with the dead section taken away.
And shortly after, with a root-pruning and installed in this nice Chuck Iker round.
I think this is going to be a very nice three-tree connected root bonsai. What do you think? Leave me a comment below.
by Zach Smith | Mar 27, 2017 | Care, Collecting, Oaks, Potting, Styling
I first wrote about this Live oak, Quercus virginiana, back in October 2015. It’s been sitting on the bench now for a couple of years, and aside from letting it grow out and giving it a haircut a couple of times a year, I haven’t done anything with it.
It has a solid history. First collected in 1997 by my late friend Allen Gautreau, it’s clearly got both actual age and age-in-training on its side. Over the years Allen brought the tree to a high level of artistry.
Since the last repotting of this old specimen was back in 2014, I felt it was certainly due some attention. This was true both below the soil surface as well as above. Time for some renewal pruning, clearing out crossing branches, etc.
When I removed the tree from its container and began cleaning up the area near the trunk base, I found that there’s a fine nebari and it’s been hidden likely for some time. Meaning there’s even more awesomeness to this specimen, just waiting to be uncovered.
Here’s what I ended up with. I turned the tree slightly in its new pot, so as to present the nebari in a more pleasing way. The branching had gotten out of hand, with plenty of crossing branches, plenty pointing back into the tree, etc. And the silhouette was a bit rangy.
All in all, I think I’ve done right by this Live oak bonsai. In a couple of weeks, it should start pushing new buds. I’ll let it grow out for a while, and then prune it back again. Stay tuned for an update later this year.
The trunk base on this tree is 2.25″ above the root crown, by the way, and it’s 21″ tall from the soil surface.
One more thing about live oaks, for those of you who haven’t worked with them. They are not technically evergreen, though you will read or hear that they are. The more correct term is “persistent-leaved.” Each year the foliage is shed, however, this occurs as new foliage emerges so effectively the tree is “evergreen.” They do not hold their foliage for two or more years, as pines and junipers do.
I’d love to hear what you think of this Live oak bonsai. Leave me a comment below.
by Zach Smith | Mar 26, 2017 | Bald Cypress, Care, Collecting, Potting, Styling, Wiring
This isn’t the first time I’ve made a deadwood Bald cypress bonsai, Taxodium distichum. They’ve been part of the ongoing How to Make Bonsai Lemonade series. Today I pulled out the last of the BC’s I’ve been ignoring, that failed to bud all the way when I collected it. As you can see, all of the growth is right near the base.
Yep, that’s a whole lot of dead wood that used to be a Bald cypress trunk. Time to do something with it.
Step one consisted of removing all of the dead bark and all of the shoots I knew I didn’t need. That left me with two as potential leaders. Each had its merits.
I decided on the thicker of the two shoots, just to get a little head start on the thickening process. A little wire, a little shaping.
This is pretty cool. There’s a weevil that burrows under the bark of weak and dying BC specimens, carving curving tunnels. These make for an interesting deadwood feature.
And finally into a training pot. I discovered that there was another set of roots below the ones that lay just beneath the soil surface, so I was effectively able to “move” the new leader higher up on the trunk.
This project will be about four or five years to the point where the tree looks like something. The main thing will be to let the leader grow out unrestrained to thicken up, then cut it back and build a branch structure on it so that it looks like a Bald cypress. I’ve got a feeling it’s going to turn out well.
The next step on this one will be to treat the dead wood with lime sulfur. It’s been chewed on by insects enough, I’d say.
The trunk base is 3″ across, and it’s 20″ to the tip of the snag.
by Zach Smith | Mar 12, 2017 | Care, Collecting, Potting, Styling, Vines
A couple of years ago, I wrote a blog on using vines for bonsai. In it, we began the tale of a neat Trumpet vine, Campsis radicans, that I collected on my property and started working on. It wasn’t long before I was able to report this progress.
Isn’t this a wonderfully “bonsai-y” designed Trumpet vine? I mean, you’ve got a nice curvy trunk that tapers because I was able to cut to a smaller leader. You’ve got the shoots you need to make a branch set. All that’s needed from this point is to let the thing grow and then make pruning decisions. And then pot the new bonsai in a suitable pot the next spring.
Well, this Trumpet vine had other ideas, as you can see from this photo I just took today. That new leader decided not to live. The branches made out of shoots did grow out, but then some of them died off. But the vine hung in there. I wasn’t sure what it was going to do this year, then I noticed some buds pushing. It’s alive!
Clearly this vine is going to decide for me what it’s going to end up being, regardless of my ideas. I have found this to be true as often as not in my years in bonsai. I suspect you will, too. The trees you work on will sometimes, despite your best efforts, not behave in the way you want them to. At which point you can either get angry or frustrated, or learn to go with the flow. We usually have a design in mind for our trees. When this design plan doesn’t work out, I’ve usually found it best just to go with the flow and see what else I can do. In this case, I pulled the vine from its (deep) pot, uncovered the rest of the original trunk, cut off the roots growing above that spot, and ended up making a literati bonsai-to-be.
Is the Trumpet vine going to go along with my new plan? Well, I don’t know but if it comes through today’s man-handling I’ll post an update. Who knows, I might just end up with a neat bonsai.
by Zach Smith | Mar 4, 2017 | Care, Collecting, Oaks, Potting, Styling, Wiring
I’ve written before about reducing roots when collecting trees. Even though my collecting season is about over, some of you may just be getting started. So this isn’t a bad time at all to review some principles – and surprises.
Before I get into this topic, I do need to stress that the information here is based solely on my own experience with certain species. I collect almost exclusively deciduous trees. Add to that a few broadleaf evergreens such as Chinese privet, Yaupon and today’s subject, Live oak. These species behave similarly to all of the deciduous species I collect, and so what I’m showing you here is applicable. Or put another way, don’t do this with a pine or juniper.
So here’s the Live oak, Quercus virginiana, that I chose for lifting and potting. Not a huge tree, but the trunk is nice and there are some well-placed branches. I whacked off most of the tree – you can see where I made the chop. The bonsai comes from what’s left.
In a few minutes I had the tree out of the ground and had washed off the roots. That’s when I got a not-unexpected shock. Look at how big those roots are! Now, I’ve grown this tree along with a bunch of others from seed collected in 2010. When I went from the growing tub to the ground, I took all of the taproots off. But that didn’t stop the tree from producing very large lateral roots in the process of getting itself established. Contrary to common belief, Live oaks grow quickly when they’re young. This specimen was about eight feet tall before I chopped it back. So the roots you’re looking at are the roots this tree planned to use to grow much bigger much faster.
Can you believe I ended up with this little root? I was a bit surprised myself. But I had to get those whoppers out of there, because the tree wasn’t going to fit into a bonsai pot any time soon if I tried to leave them and gradually work them down. So I bit the bullet.
This brings up a very important point when you’re collecting deciduous trees, namely, don’t leave the roots too long. It isn’t necessary, first of all, and it ends up causing headaches when it’s time to put the tree in a bonsai pot. Ideally, when you collect a tree – or basically a trunk, because it may have zero branches – you should have in mind the finished height of the tree and what size bonsai pot it’ll end up in. If you size your pot correctly, those long roots you leave on because you’re worried about cutting off too much just aren’t going to fit. Take it from me; I’ve learned this lesson the hard way.
Is this tree going to survive the drastic root-pruning I gave it? Obviously, any given tree may not survive collecting, but I think I’ve got a pretty good shot. This tree has enough root tissue, and it’s been reduced enough on both ends, that it will be prompted to regenerate what’s “missing.” In a fashion analogous to rooting a cutting, only more reliable, all trees have a strong “urge” to survive and in order to do so will grow roots and leaves. That’s really the basic principle that allows us to collect trees in the first place.
This Live oak needed one more challenge, so I put it directly into a bonsai pot. I buried the minimal roots pretty deep, to ensure they stay moist.
And finally, after a little wiring and trimming. Assuming it survives, this is going to make a pretty neat broom-form Live oak bonsai. The trunk base is 1″ in diameter, and it’s 16″ to the tip of the apex.
Let me know what you think by leaving a comment below.
by Zach Smith | Feb 26, 2017 | Bald Cypress, Care, Collecting, Potting
With an early spring in the offing, today was probably just a bit beyond the end of the collecting season. All of the specimens I brought home today were already leafing out. Now, I’ve had good luck collecting cypresses after they start budding, so I don’t have a lot of concern that the ones I brought home today won’t make it. But it would have been preferable had they been a little less out. I’ll know in a few weeks how it went.
Meanwhile, here are a few shots from today’s adventure.
This is what you call overdoing it when you’re 62. There are 15 trees here. Oh, I had the young strong help getting them out of the swamp, but the work on the back end is a lot harder. It took almost four hours to get these guys cleaned up and potted.
I often make note of the fact that when I pot a collected tree, the lateral roots get buried deep in the pot to protect them from drying out. Here’s one of the bigger trees I got today. The cut ends of the large roots you see here have to go at least three inches beneath the soil. Though we water our trees on a schedule, between waterings the soil at the surface of the pot gets fairly dry. If this goes too far into the pot, you end up with a cut root that dries out. Cypresses in particular are like sponges – and I mean that just about literally. When you’re cutting the smaller roots of a cypress, they will actually squeeze like a sponge. It has to do with how the cells are made, though I don’t know the botany behind it. Anyway, once you pot up a large cypress with those big cut roots they suck up water like a sponge, so you want to keep that flow going. With the chop sealed off, the water that is sucked up into the tree goes to keep the cells hydrated and ultimately to allow for new buds to form.
Here’s another of the larger ones for today. Again, those lateral roots will end up buried inches under the soil surface.
Here’s another specimen, a smaller tree with great trunk movement and superb lateral roots. This is unusual for a tree with this small a caliper.
And one more. This tree is also not particularly large in terms of basal trunk thickness. But it has fantastic roots.
And finally, here’s one I plan to keep for my collection. It’s a terrific twin-trunk, which I plan to make into a literati flat-top. The trunk base on the larger tree is 1.75″, and it’s 25″ to the chop. The smaller one is 0.5″ at the base. The pot is an extraordinary piece by Chuck Iker.
Let me know what you think of these trees. With a little luck, I’ll be posting more specimens for sale in the next few weeks.
