by Zach Smith | Oct 9, 2016 | Care, Chinese Elm, Elms, Ficus, Flowering, Hawthorn, Potting, Pruning, Styling, Wiring
Sunday morning musings
I love big bonsai. I’ve loved big bonsai since I first got really into the art, and became aware that bonsai could range up to four feet tall. I’ve collected and trained my share of big bonsai. And whenever Cathy is explaining to someone that very odd thing I do, she invariably says I grow “giant” bonsai.
So with that introduction there’s an obvious question to be asked: Can there be big happiness in small packages? The answer is yes (wouldn’t be much of a blog post if the answer was no, right?).
Over the past 25+ years I’ve collected somewhere on the order of 1,500 trees. For the most part these were trees sporting trunks of 2″ basal diameter and up. Yet there’s so much more to bonsai. Through the years I’ve done a good bit of propagation, and I really enjoy it. Whether it’s from seed or cuttings or layers, making new plants gives me a real sense of accomplishment. You might call it big happiness in a small package.
Here’s a prime example of a really insignificant piece of material, a Green island ficus, Ficus microcarpa. I just made this “small package” about eight weeks ago from a much larger bonsai owned by one of our local club members. His tree has produced countless clones for club members over the years. I took a small shoot he trimmed off his tree, dusted it with rooting powder and stuck it in a pot filled with sand. It faithfully produced roots in just over a week, at which time I potted it in a gallon nursery container. I fed and watered it, then waited for it to start growing. It’s quadrupled in mass since then, and a couple weeks ago I carefully pulled it from its nursery container and put it into this nice Chuck Iker round. My plan is to bring it indoors this winter, then next spring grow it bigger still (making more small ones along the way). In time I should have a nice indoor bonsai, as the tree “grows into” the pot. But I’ll tell you, this small ficus brings me a huge amount of pleasure – big happiness, as it were.
Here’s another small package I wrote about in a blog some time ago, a Chinese elm, Ulmus parvifolia. This is another bonsai that started out life as a cutting. In this case, rather than grow the tree on in a larger nursery container or the ground, I potted it straight into a bonsai pot and began its training. Six years later, the tree had developed into a miniaturized Chinese elm with a relatively small trunk. But it developed tons of character along the way. Small package, big happiness. I sent it off to a new home this year, where I know it’s brought a lot of joy.
Here’s an example of big happiness in a really small package. I grew this tiny Water-elm, Planera aquatica, from a cutting I made last year. The cutting wasn’t the normal straight whip most commonly used for propagating by this technique, so it had a ready-made branch structure. Today I put it in this very small hand-made pot. It stands a mere 5.5″ above the soil surface. Does it look like a real tree in nature? You be the judge, but to my old eyes the answer is most definitely.
Oh, just so you can get an idea of the relative size of this “big happiness”….
Bonsai is one of the most unique pastimes there is. When you consider the variety of species, styles and range of expression in the art; the flowers and fruit of certain species; the vision and diligent care of the artist; the quiet character of the miniature tree through the seasons; from the tiniest shohins to the grandest imperial size bonsai, it’s hard to find a more pleasing pursuit.
by Zach Smith | Oct 2, 2016 | Bald Cypress, Care, Potting, Styling
I love forest plantings. With that said, I’ve seen countless poor forest plantings, and it’s all due to poor design. So how do you ensure that your design will pass muster? Is there a formula? Actually, there is. Here’s a bald cypress forest I assembled today from a group of saplings I’d grown from seed started a few years ago.
It’s not much to look at, having been made from an odd collection of less-than-stellar saplings, but focus your attention on the bases of the trunks. If you get this part right, the rest almost takes care of itself. If you get this part wrong, there’s not a lot you can do to correct the problem without ripping the forest apart and starting over.
So if you focus on the bases of the trunks, your brain should recognize something that “makes sense” to it. Bonsai forests are landscape scenes to an even greater extent than individual bonsai are. It’s not just a single tree, a lone sentinel as it were; it’s much more complex. In the grand world of bonsai, the forest planting lies smack in between the individual bonsai and saikei – a planting that consists of trees, stones, sometimes water, and even miniature buildings and figurines. It’s hard to do saikei well; it’s hard to do bonsai forests well. But I hope to make it a little easier for you.
Let’s start with how to plan a bonsai forest. First of all, the obvious. It’s going to have an odd number of trees, unless you’re going for the really big ones that are in excess of 11 trees. After 11, it’s not vital that you stick with odd numbers.
Second, the trees should have similar characteristics in terms of trunk style. For the most part, you don’t want to mix trees with straight trunks and trees with curving trunks (you can see that I need to actually wire a few of the specimens next spring to straighten them – not a huge chore, but necessary). You also want varying trunk sizes, namely, a largest focal tree, one to a few trees of somewhat smaller caliber, and other specimens with decreasing trunk sizes. You’ll want a couple of trees with really thin trunks, specifically to go in the rear of the planting.
Next comes the plot plan. For those of you who are experienced at making well-designed forest plantings, this doesn’t have to be formalized. If you’re new to the game, I’d highly suggest sitting down and making yourself a drawing like the one below.
Here I’ve reduced the design pictured above to a plot plan drawing. It’s basically the layout of the forest. It’s also a sure-fire way to create a design that looks right. Notice the dotted lines I’ve added that show a key principle of forest design – no trunks visually obscuring others, either from the front or side view. I’ve listed this and the other design principles in a nutshell, to the left. If you simply follow these rules, you’ll be hard-pressed to go wrong.
Have you done any forest plantings? Are you satisfied with the results? I’d love to hear any feedback you’re willing to share.
by Zach Smith | Oct 1, 2016 | Care, Chinese Elm, Elms, Potting, Styling, Water Elm, Wiring
The days are getting shorter, and many if not most of you have already had some cool nights. Your bonsai have also begun to slow their growth. Now, this doesn’t mean they aren’t growing at all, it just means the dynamic growth of spring and early summer has given way to a different set of priorities for your trees. With fall comes a single imperative for temperate zone trees, namely, surviving the coming winter. To be sure, reproduction is near completion for many species – Chinese elms among them. Mine in the landscape are covered in seeds. But beyond this, the trees are working hard on storing food to get them through winter. As a bonsai artist, you may have noticed this phenomenon by way of wire that has suddenly bitten into branches you wired weeks ago. They sat undisturbed for all that time, all was well, then one day you walk out and are surprised to see the wire is binding. This fall swelling is due to food storage activities, and is perfectly normal. It also can be aggravating, but that’s part of the fun of bonsai.
Once you get all the wire off your trees needing it, you don’t want to miss an opportunity to do some pruning and even rewiring if you so choose. The leaves will be falling from your deciduous trees within about eight weeks. Once they’re gone, nothing is going to happen again until spring. There’s certainly nothing wrong with waiting till then to wire your trees again – but don’t forget that spring brings with it chores that must be done at that time. For those of you whose collections are rather large, repotting alone will occupy a great deal of your time once the buds start swelling. I do my share of pruning and wiring at repotting time, but trees that have already been wired the previous fall can go right to the repotting process. It can make a big difference.
This water-elm was a perfect candidate for some fall pruning. The tree is only in its second year of training, but the basic branch structure is done. Next year the tree will move into the ramification stage, where I devote most of my effort to building foliage pads on each of the branches. It’ll start looking more “organized.”
Today’s work consisted of three significant activities:
- I pruned out unneeded branchlets and shoots
- I carved two uros, one of them at the chop transition point in the apex, and treated with wood hardener; and
- I wired and positioned the number one left branch, which is a year younger than the other primary branches on the tree
I won’t touch this specimen again until next spring, at which time I’ll likely do a little more refined pruning and wiring.
Here’s another activity you can do in the fall, depending on the species and your skill level. I’ve been reporting on this Chinese elm during 2016 as I developed it into a nice pre-bonsai specimen. Today I decided the tree was ready for a bonsai pot, so I grabbed this Chuck Iker round off the shelf and cut off enough roots to fit the tree into it.
Is fall really an okay time to be potting trees? Again, it depends on the species and your skill level. I know that root growth is fairly vigorous in the fall, so this tree should recover fine over the next 6-8 weeks – in time for actual cold weather here. There won’t be any significant foliar growth for the rest of 2016, but that’s all right. Come spring of next year, this tree will be ready to explode with new growth, at which time I’ll be able to complete the design. If I wait till spring to pot the tree, the growth will be delayed by a few weeks and I’ll lose a round of growth. This way I get a leg up.
by Zach Smith | Sep 29, 2016 | Care, Flowering, Loropetalum, Potting, Styling, Water Elm
The weekend is almost upon us, and that means more bonsai action is on the way. I got a little restless this evening, so I decided to photograph a few bonsai-to-be and post them just for fun.
I’m probably the only person on the planet who propagates water-elm, Planera aquatica. I’ve always been fascinated by the species. Though it’s kin to the elms, it’s not quite an elm due apparently to the seed which is a prickly nut rather than a winged seed. I’ve got thousands of winged seeds on my landscape Chinese elms right now, but I’ve never seen a water-elm nut. I hope to someday.
This specimen was grown from a cutting, which was then grown in a pot for a while, which was then put in the ground for a couple of years. The trunk’s reached 1″ in diameter, so I thought it would be a good time to lift it and see what I could make out of it. This Chuck Iker round was a good start. I work on a lot of big water-elms, so this one should be a nice change of pace. I plan on making it into a broom-form bonsai. New buds are just starting to show, so that means I ought to have a nice final flush of growth for the end of this growing season.
This Chinese elm, Ulmus parvifolia, is taking a more traditional path. Also grown from a cutting, it spent a good few years in a pot getting tall and lanky. I cut it back hard this year and am presently building a shohin informal upright out of it. Next spring it gets a bonsai pot, a lot of crown development and a more rounded crown.
I’m about to introduce a new species to the Bonsai South family, Loropetalum chinense or Chinese fringe flower. Loropetalum, as it’s most commonly known, is a broadleaf evergreen with great dusky scarlet foliage which is naturally small. The species backbuds extremely well and twigs up easily. Look for some specimens for sale in three or four weeks. I potted this one a couple of weeks ago, and it’s throwing new buds. Great tree structure, eh?
by Zach Smith | Sep 23, 2016 | Care, Ficus, Potting, Styling
My great-grandparents immigrated to the U.S. from Sicily in the late 1800s – the emigration grant from King Umberto of Italy is in the family archives, a very neat document. If there’s one thing about folks who immigrated from the Old World, especially those from around the Mediterranean, they loved their traditions and that included foods. Another thing they all seemed to have was a fig tree in the yard. Edible fig, Ficus carica, is native to the Middle East and Asia. It’s been cultivated since Biblical times. I never knew anyone in the family who didn’t have a fig tree in the yard. And so my mother had a few in her yard, which produced bountifully each year. She made preserves and fig cakes every year – I can still taste them.
My mother died in 2014 at the age of 91. A few years prior, she’d given me permission to dig up one of her smaller fig trees – and I jumped at the chance. I love family traditions, and this is one I couldn’t not continue. So I planted my fig tree dutifully and it grew large and fruitful. A few years ago I started some cuttings in order to make bonsai from them. It’s something I’ve always wanted to do, but never quite got around to.
Today I decided to pot a couple of these specimens. This first one has some nice branching already, and should make a typical broom-form style bonsai as it develops. The leaves, which are quite large in nature, reduce surprisingly well in a bonsai pot. This one already has a head-start on leaf-size reduction. The pot is a beautiful round by Chuck Iker, which I think complements the bright green leaf color nicely.
If you’d like some Old World charm in a bonsai, I’ve posted this specimen for sale at our new Ficus Bonsai sale page.
Oh, edible fig does fruit in a container, by the way.
This next specimen is not quite as far along as the one above, but it’ll catch up in the 2017 growing season. Both trees are of similar height, so you can see that this one has the large leaves normal to edible fig. But that will change next year.
This specimen is also in a nice Chuck Iker round. It’ll go up for sale in a couple of weeks.
by Zach Smith | Sep 17, 2016 | Bald Cypress, Care, Potting, Pruning, Styling, Wiring
In the fall of 2010, I made a visit to the Cat Island National Wildlife Refuge, which is 17 miles from my home, to see the National Champion Bald Cypress. Here’s a photo I took of the tree:
This massive tree, reputedly the largest of any species east of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, measures 17 feet in diameter at breast height. It’s 96 feet tall. To give you an idea of the relative scale of this huge tree, here’s a photo of me and The Champ:
Notice that I’m standing in front of the left-hand part of the trunk – I couldn’t get the whole thing in the frame because I was using the timer on my camera and had to hustle back. Anyway, I think you can see just how big this guy is. And by the way, you can slip up inside the buttress to the right of where I am. It’s awesomely cool.
I couldn’t help but think it would be great to propagate this venerable old tree, so I set about to collect some cones. That was problematic, as there just weren’t that many. But I guess when you’ve been propagating for 1500 years or so, you get tired.
So I took my trove home and put them into a sandy mix in a big tub, then I waited. True to form, only about a handful of the seeds sprouted – they were from a very old tree, right? Normally with BC, you can pretty much count on 100% germination.
Anyway, I eventually potted the seedlings into their own containers, then just fed and watered and left them alone – more neglect, you might say. But there’s not much to be done with BC seedlings, aside from making forest plantings. Over time, my Champ progeny dwindled to only two. But they grew nicely, and that pleased me greatly.
It’s an axiom that bald cypresses, left to their own devices in a pot, will get to looking pretty shaggy to downright awful in the foliage come this time of year. These have been no exception. Here’s what I mean:
You can see a little green foliage on this lovely lanky six-year-old seedling; this is what sprouts back out after the spring foliage gets tired and turns brown followed by black and crispy. The tree won’t die, but it sure doesn’t look like much. But I think I can change that.
So here we are after shortening the specimen, wiring it out and removing the soil from the roots. Nice roots, which is no surprise. Coiled roots, which is no surprise. That’s what comes when you leave any piece of material in a container for too long. The roots do what they have to do to grow and survive, and if that means coiling around the pot a bunch of times that’s exactly what they’ll do.
A closeup of the roots. I had to cut some growing through the pot’s drainage hole; this is the rest.
I added a piece of wire to the trunk – it was too straight before. Doesn’t this make all the difference?
Then it was time to pot the tree. I had this nice Chuck Iker round, and thought it would work just fine for my Child of the Champ. In a few minutes this is what I had.
And now for the million-dollar question: What’s wrong with this picture?
You may recall that last week I had written about a three-tree oak planting which was just in the wrong pot. A key point of that study was the fact that I had a very tall main tree in a rather large – too-large – pot. So when I repotted the planting into a smaller pot, which accentuated the height of the main tree even further, all of a sudden the composition improved.
That’s just not going to work with this tree. Isn’t that interesting?
I had this Byron Myrick oval that had previously held a yaupon bonsai – another case of a pot being too big for the tree in it. In this case, though, I think I have a composition that makes the tree actually look in proper scale. What do you think?
The trunk base of this specimen, incidentally, is 1″ in diameter. It’s 32″ tall. I have a flat-top in mind, a good style for a tall slender cypress.
This tree should push new growth in a week or two, barring unforeseens. I plan to offer it for sale when I’m sure it’s recovered.
Next year I’ll be potting my other Child of the Champ. It’s grown more strongly than this one, and actually has the beginnings of root buttressing in a relatively small diameter trunk base. I’m anxious to see how it turns out.
