by Zach Smith | May 14, 2016 | Care, Flowering, Potting, Vines
Last September I wrote about a Japanese wisteria, Wisteria floribunda, I’d rescued after it had been left for dead by a tree service I hired. Well, another spring is upon us and this pre-bonsai has already been through its annual bloom and the new foliar growth is starting to vine.
I had made a mental note to remove this specimen from its tub, wash the root mass thoroughly and get a good read on its integrity. As I mentioned last fall, large collected wisterias tend to turn to rot in just a few years, and this one was going down that path. On a positive note, it seemed to have reached a point where the rot had arrested, leaving me with something that just might turn into a bonsai.
The cleaning was a time-consuming process, owing to the serious root mass along with an immense number of weeds (caused by a little too much benign neglect, eh?). It took me the better part of 15 minutes to get everything washed. In this photo you can see the result. Another of my goals was to reposition the tree with an eye toward its eventual ceramic home. While the original recumbent position wasn’t bad, it also wasn’t that good. A more upright position was called for.
After some judicious root-pruning, I put the tree back in a growing tub (since that was the smallest thing I had available to plant it in). Not only is it in its new position, I’ve turned the tree so that the living side as opposed to the hollow side is exposed. While both are interesting I like this side better, plus it has some very nice surface roots which have developed over the past few years.
Though there’s no predicting for certain, I expect this wisteria to continue flowering each spring. I’ll post a photo of it next season. For now, I plan to feed it and treat it to some more benign neglect *ahem* while being more diligent about plucking weeds.
By the way, I didn’t make mention of this last fall but this wisteria specimen could be over 100 years old. They come up as volunteers around here, and seek out trees to grow up into. This also tends to keep them safe from normal yard cleanup activities, provided you like wisteria of course. I do. And a few of the oaks I had removed were large enough to be in excess of a century old.
The trunk is 6″ across, and the tree is 30″ tall.
Let me know what you think of this wisteria by leaving me a comment below.
by Zach Smith | Apr 23, 2016 | Care, Flowering, Potting, Privet, Styling, Wiring
I showed you this Chinese privet, Ligustrum sinense, earlier in the season. I collected it in Winter 2016 and direct-potted it into this nice Byron Myrick oval. Because it had a complete trunk, nice movement and taper into the apex where I knew I could grow a crown in no time, there was no reason not to go straight to a bonsai pot.
So here it is, all flush with new growth. Time to do the initial styling before the branches get too stiff (privet branches get way too stiff to bend if you don’t catch them while they’re young and tender).
It’s best to work from bottom to top when you’re styling your trees. While this isn’t a hard and fast rule, it does make branch selection and placement easier.
My first step was to clear unneeded growth, once I had selected my first two branches. Since I want to wire branches in pairs, whenever possible, I work my way up the tree picking branches two at a time. This helps tremendously.
Now the first two branches are wired and positioned. There are two benefits in doing this: one, the branches are where they need to be based on the intended design; and two, with these branches in position it’s easier for me to select and envision the positions of the next two branches.
Two more branches are wired now, a back branch and one coming toward the viewer. Regarding the latter, you need branches that move into the viewing zone, however, these are typically not found until you get more than halfway up the tree. Remember, you want the first third to half of your trunk to be visible to the viewer. At that point, you want foliage crossing the trunk. A front-pointing branch is one way to make this happen. In my privet, I’ve got a branch in just the right spot to make this happen.
Now the next two branches are wired. Both of these are in the back of the tree. This helps with the illusion of depth. Bonsai are three-dimensional objects, so without branches emerging all around the tree you run the risk of destroying the illusion you’re trying to create.
After a little more editing and wiring, the finished result. This tree now has its basic structure in place. The next step is to let it continue growing, which will thicken the branches and start the ramification process. I’ll need to remove the wire in about two to three weeks, then wire again for the summer growing season. By fall, this will be a presentable Chinese privet bonsai.
The trunk base of this tree is 1.5″. Finished height should be about 16″.
This tree is available at our Chinese privet bonsai page.
by Zach Smith | Apr 9, 2016 | Care, Maples, Potting, Pruning, Soil
About four years ago I acquired this trident maple, Acer buergerianum, from a bonsai friend. He had been growing it in his field bed for several years prior and wanted to get rid of it. I gladly agreed to saw it out of the ground – which, way too much time later proved just about impossible. We lashed it to the back of his Jeep and finished the job that way.
Well, this was the last tree I potted up that day and I was pretty tired. So it went into a really big tub, after which it pretty much sat untouched until today. Just food and water.
It took about an hour, a lot of water and a lot of muscle to get the tree to this point. Isn’t the root base amazing? I had buried it, as I always do, when it was first collected in order to protect it from drying out. This technique works on everything I collect; rarely will I lose a large lateral root on a tree. This trident was no different.
Here’s a shot from the back. You can see where the trunk was chopped several years ago after the tree had been allowed to grow unchecked to thicken the base. The callus is rolling over. Tridents heal well, so in time this wound should close mostly or completely.
Isn’t that a great mat of fibrous roots! You should see the amount I cut away.
It’s a little hard to see from this angle, but there are large buttressing roots all the way around this specimen. Once this tree finds its way into a bonsai pot, the nebari is going to be stunning.
Here’s the tree in its smaller tub. I cut away a lot of stiff larger branches, which could not be bent. When the tree re-buds, I’ll be able to wire the tender new shoots and get a good branch set started. This should happen over the next several weeks.
This tree is available at our Miscellaneous Bonsai sales page, for anyone who’s wanted to tackle a really big trident maple. I believe it can ship in late May or early June.
by Zach Smith | Apr 6, 2016 | Care, Hornbeam, Potting, Styling
Now that spring has taken hold, a number of my newly collected specimens are starting to get established and closer to their initial training. One thing I like to do whenever feasible is to directly pot new trees into bonsai containers. I do this in part because it shortens the time from initial collecting to finished bonsai, and who doesn’t want that? Of course, there are some important considerations when undertaking a direct-potting approach. For one, you need to have either a mostly complete trunk or stick with specimens that have enough apical dominance that you can create the appropriate taper through to the apex in two or three seasons. Bald cypress and hawthorn are two species that have sufficient apical dominance to allow you to do this. But with just a few exceptions, you want to stick with trees that are complete trunks only needing a branch structure.
This is an Eastern hophornbeam, Ostrya virginiana. It’s a cousin to American hornbeam – they’re both members of the Birch family, Betulaceae. When I ran across this one during a collecting trip, I saw a complete trunk with nice character (damage, actually) and even some branches to start with. It was a no-brainer to direct-pot it into this beautiful little Chuck Iker round. The trunk base is 1.25″ and it’s 11″ to the tip of the apex. It’s mostly leafed out now and starting to push shoots. I would expect it’ll be ready to sell in another month.
Hophornbeam differs from hornbeam in a few important ways: one, it eventually develops a rough, plated bark which is very attractive; two, the leaves are persistent through winter as they do not produce an abscission layer (like beech), light tan in color and easy to spot; and finally, the leaves are somewhat coarser than hornbeam’s and remain lighter green in color through the growing season. They ramify and reduce leaf-size well as hornbeam does. One other significant difference is that they are surprisingly hard to lift in large sizes with a high success rate.
Oh, and hophornbeam also shares with hornbeam the common name ironwood. If you’ve ever tried to chop one down with an axe, you understand what that means.
I think this is a nice little specimen with a great future as a bonsai.
As with the hophornbeam above, when I spotted this Chinese privet, Ligustrum sinense, I knew it was going straight to a bonsai pot. Except for a couple of stubs, I didn’t have any branches to work with but I knew that wasn’t a problem. The trunk line was pretty much complete and perfectly tapering – I just needed to finish out the apex. You can probably see where I chopped the trunk up near the apex to the thinner (new) trunk line. And now I’ve got plenty of buds to wire into a branch set once they’ve extended enough. That should happen in another three or four weeks.
I think this terrific Byron Myrick oval really suits the tree. The color will complement the color of the bark and provide a nice contrast with the leaves once the tree fills out.
The trunk base on this specimen is 1.5″ above the root crown, and it’s chopped at 13″. Finished height will be about 16″.
Watch for this tree to go up for sale in May as well.
by Zach Smith | Apr 3, 2016 | Bald Cypress, Care, Potting, Pruning, Soil, Styling, Water Elm
I posted this fall shot of my ‘Root Around Cypress Knee’ Water-elm, Planera aquatica. The tree had been in its pot for a couple of years. Because I had not been able to give it a lot of room during the first potting, I didn’t want to wait another year to cut back the roots and give the tree fresh soil. Plus I wanted to get an idea of the condition of the knee, which is not going to last more than another season or two. This knee is composed of sapwood. While bald cypress heartwood is virtually indestructible, the sapwood is very light and rots easily. This is especially true if the wood remains in contact with water. In the case of this tree, there was a smaller knee emerging from the left-hand side of the trunk base which rotted away last year. So that left me with the main knee.
Here’s a shot of the tree from the rear, after I pulled it from the pot. You can see there were plenty of roots. You can also see the very nice nebari this tree has. This is good news for the time when that knee isn’t with me any longer. It’ll make for a good, stable looking surface root structure.
In this shot I’ve already teased out and eliminated a lot of the roots, especially finer surface roots. This exposed the lower part of the knee and allowed me to judge its integrity. There’s softness going on, and because the knee has a cut surface on the bottom its ability to absorb moisture just cannot be thwarted. Cypress wood is pretty much like a sponge. This is why when collecting the species you have to seal the top chop. Water is sucked up through the sapwood from the severed tap and lateral roots, and it’ll evaporate right through the sapwood at the top chop and dry the tree out.
Another angle on the nebari embracing the knee.
Now the roots are all trimmed and the tree is ready to go back in its pot.
The final result. I’ve raised the tree somewhat in the pot, exposing the fine nebari it possesses. Even once the knee is gone, this is going to be a fine water-elm bonsai.
The trunk base is 2.5″ in diameter and it’s 21″ tall. The pot is a beautiful rounded-corner rectangle by Byron Myrick.
by Zach Smith | Mar 5, 2016 | Care, Elms, Potting, Water Elm
You may remember the story of this water-elm clump, featured in the blog post “How to Make Bonsai Lemonade – Part 2.” I had taken a nice raft-style tree I’d been working on for years, that got almost killed off in Winter 2014, and gave it new life as a clump-style bonsai. Part of that process was potting the tree into this nice Byron Myrick tray. But there was a problem with the composition, at least to my eye. Does anything jump out at you?
While the pot is a very nice one, it just felt too large to me. When the pot is too large relative to your bonsai, it diminishes the impression of size the tree produces making it look more juvenile. The proportions are wrong. Remember, it’s not the purpose of the pot to overwhelm or “outshine” the tree; rather, the pot’s purpose is to complement and thus “frame” the tree. They have to work together. When the pot isn’t right for your tree, your eye will tend to be drawn to that fact as you view it just as it is to a flaw in the tree itself.
I’ve been waiting patiently for signs of swelling buds on my water-elms. Indeed, they come out later that most other species I work with. This past week I saw some signs, so that told me it was time to correct the flaw in this bonsai.
I just got this nice tray in from Chuck Iker. If you compare this photo with the one above, you can see how much different the tree looks now. The pot doesn’t overwhelm the tree. Moreover, the tree now looks larger and more mature. The proportions are just better.
Pot selection is one of the more difficult skills to learn when you’re studying the art of bonsai. We all tend to focus on the trees themselves, and rightfully so. Getting a tree styled properly is no mean task. But that doesn’t mean we can neglect this most important piece of the puzzle.
This tree is now available at our Elm Bonsai sale page. It should be ready for shipping in about three or four weeks max, once it’s leafing out.
Oh, and if you can discover the one rule I’ve blatantly broken with this clump, I’ll give you an ironic 10% off the price.
