by Zach Smith | Feb 6, 2016 | Bald Cypress, Potting, Pruning
Today I was finally able to start the bald cypress (Taxodium distichum) collecting season. The weather was cool and dry, meaning ideal; the material was plentiful. In fact, I pretty much stopped collecting when I ran out of charged battery packs – which was for the best, as I had to do the cleaning up and potting on the back side. My personal battery pack barely lasted through it.
Here’s the gang, waiting for processing. You can see the nice, fluted trunks. They’re mostly medium sized specimens, with trunks in the 3-4″ diameter range.
Here’s one of them after a cleanup and final root-pruning, just prior to potting in a growing tub. Ideally, you want this sort of buttressing in the lower trunk. It’s the classic bald cypress growth habit, and one of the reasons bonsai artists prize them.
This tree has a 4.5″ trunk about 5″ from the soil surface, and is chopped at 29″. I’m thinking it would make a nice, graceful flat-top bald cypress bonsai.
Here’s an interesting specimen. Notice the bulging on the root coming toward the front? Yes, that’s the beginnings of a knee. We find such examples from time to time. This one just happened to be worth bringing home. The trunk measures 4″ in diameter and it’s chopped at 21.5″. Plenty of styling possibilities.
Some of the bald cypresses down south are starting to push buds already. A few on my bench are doing so. I’m thinking that means these trees will start showing activity in two to three weeks. Stay tuned; I’ll begin posting some for sale as soon as I can.
by Zach Smith | Jan 31, 2016 | Care, Oaks, Potting, Pruning
I wrote last evening’s post a bit hurriedly. I was fighting the daylight to get the trees chopped and potted, so much so that I ran out of charged power packs and had to delay this specimen until today. But it gave me an opportunity to explain a little more about the decisions we have to make in order to create a bonsai – in this case from the ground up.
If you look at this tree you’re bound to be thinking one thing: fencepost (or its equivalent). And that’s exactly correct. This tree was originally grown for landscape use, meaning perfectly straight. But what works for the landscape does not generally work for the bonsai artist. The fact is, there are only three styles of bonsai in which no taper in the trunk is necessary: broom-form, literati and forest plantings. Now, since this is a live oak I plan to grow it in the live oak broom-form style, which is one of the variants on live oak style. Okay, so far so good. But then we have to ask ourselves the question, how long should the trunk be before the crown begins? For most species, the answer is longer than for a live oak. You may have seen live oaks either in nature or in photos. They tend to have a relatively short main trunk, from which proceed multiple sub-trunks that form an informal fan shape. Some of the lower growing sub-sub-trunks can even reach the ground on older specimens.
With that in mind, then, how long should the main trunk of this live oak be? As dug and chopped in the field, the trunk is 22″. I can tell you that’s way too much. So I go back to my rule of thumb: chop a trunk without taper two to three trunk diameters away from the base. This trunk is 4″ in diameter, so if I chop it to 10″ it should look fine.
Here’s the result. Though there’s nothing but trunk and root, this specimen already looks better. I can visualize sub-trunks emerging as buds followed by shoots from the chop area. Then it’s a matter of wiring and positioning them.
Finally, the stump is potted in a tub with the roots buried. Hopefully it’ll make it. I should know in early March; that’s when the live oaks start replacing their leaves.
by Zach Smith | Jan 16, 2016 | Care, Flowering, Hawthorn, Potting, Styling
From the beginning of my bonsai journey almost three decades ago I’ve wanted a parsley hawthorn, Crataegus marshallii. Though I’ve collected my fair share of hawthorns, I’ve never found a parsley haw. Today that all changed. I was out collecting with a friend, and he took me to a vacant lot where he had collected a very large specimen years earlier. Though the leaves were off most of the trees, we did manage to find a few smaller seedlings that were still holding onto a few of their leaves. Here’s a branch from one.
I ended up with a handful of trees including the one at left, which is destined for the literati style. Considering this, I went ahead and put it into this nice Chuck Iker round. The color should complement the fall foliage really well. The trunk base is 1.5″ and I chopped it to 16″. I plan to add another 6-8″ to the height. I’m looking forward to working on this tree. It should be budding sometime in March.
Here’s another one I couldn’t resist putting straight into a bonsai pot. The trunk base on the larger tree is 1″ and it’s chopped at 14″. I just got the pot from Byron Myrick last week. This is going to be a really nice, graceful twin-trunk parsley hawthorn bonsai.
by Zach Smith | Jan 10, 2016 | Care, Flowering, Hawthorn, Potting, Wiring
Winter is the time to do light pruning on your deciduous trees and, for those needing it, wiring. Today I worked on a couple of hawthorns, a Mayhaw and a riverflat hawthorn.
This is the Mayhaw, Crataegus aestivalus, that I’ve been developing for the past five years. In 2015 I repotted the tree late – see “Did The Mayhaw Make It?” – and it responded with tremendous growth. I deliberately left the tree alone after it was repotted, not wanting to tax it unduly, and today when I went to trim it back there were plentiful shoots well over a foot long. So I trimmed everything back to within the appropriate silhouette, plus I removed crossing branches and those pointing straight up and straight down. The result looks very much like a real tree, of course with the exception of the crown which is about two years away from its final development. But you can’t argue with the very nice ramification I’ve gotten with this specimen. The trunk base is 2.75″ above the root crown, and it’s 22″ to the tip of the leader.
This riverflat hawthorn, Crataegus opaca, is without a doubt my favorite bonsai at present. Isn’t it lovely? This specimen has reached the point where it’s only lacking completion of the crown, most likely about two years away, and continued ramification as it matures. But all in all, this is just a gorgeous bonsai.
You may be wondering about the moss. It literally “exploded” late in the season, puffing up three inches over the soil surface. Very interesting. I plan to remove it in spring, but in the meantime I figure it’ll help with winter protection of the roots.
The trunk of this tree is 3.5″ above the root crown, and it’s 29″ tall.
by Zach Smith | Jan 9, 2016 | Bald Cypress, Care, Potting, Soil, Styling, Wiring
I last showed you this bald cypress, Taxodium distichum, when I did the initial styling on it a couple of months ago. It grew very well in 2015, after being collected in February of that same year. I decided the tree was ready for its first bonsai pot this year. Now, you may wonder if I’m not rushing things, considering that the new leader is hardly thick enough to make a believable transition at the chop point. But I know just how powerfully top-dominant bald cypress is, so the new apex of this tree can be entirely grown after it’s placed in a bonsai pot.
I commissioned this Byron Myrick oval for the tree. All sorts of greens do very nicely with cypress, as they evoke not only the foliage of the species but also the swampy habitat. This one is no different. Also, the oval shape should complement the graceful curve of the tree.
My first chore is to work on the chop area. You can see that I chose a new leader below the chop and wired it up to continue the trunk line. Now I need to saw off the chop flush with the leader. That’s step number one in prepping this apex for what will ultimately be an uninterrupted trunk line that tapers smoothly from soil line to its tip.
The cut went quickly with my Japanese pruning saw. Cypress has light sapwood, so it’s very easy to work.
Next I used my trunk splitter to make this angled cut. Notice the “shelf” I left near the new leader. This is designed to keep the swelling callus from producing a reverse taper a couple of years down the road. By forcing the callus tissue to cover the shelf, it won’t grow nearly as quickly as the callus below it. Ultimately, it’ll be completely rolled over and will make a very smooth tapering transition.
Here’s a view from the back. Notice that I’ve carved down the rough cut. This will all be sealed when I’m through potting the tree. It’s freshly cut sapwood, and it’ll transpire moisture right out of the trunk and threaten the tree’s survival if I don’t protect it.
Next I unpotted the tree. Check out all the roots I got in a single year! You can also see the buttressing roots I buried right after I collected it. They stayed protected, meaning they stayed alive, and they sprouted new feeder roots as expected.
Finally, here’s the tree in its new home. The branches and the new leader are where I need them to be going into the 2016 growing season. My two chores are creating the tree’s apex and flushing out the branch structure. This is about a four to five year project.
If you’d like to take over the training of this tree, it’s available at our Bald Cypress Bonsai page. The trunk base is 4″ at the soil surface, and it’s 22″ to the chop point. I’m planning for a final height of 30-32″. This is going to be a very elegant bald cypress bonsai.
by Zach Smith | Jan 2, 2016 | Care, Flowering, Hawthorn, Potting
Today was a nice, chilly winter day. It wasn’t too cold, nor was it rainy, so you’re basically talking about perfect collecting weather. I gather most of my deciduous material in January and February each year, and that includes hawthorns.
Most of my collecting trips result in at least one really awesome piece that makes the whole trip worthwhile. Today it was this nice old riverflat hawthorn, Crataegus opaca. The base is 2.75″ at soil level and it’s 20″ to the chop. You can’t beat the trunk movement, and the roots aren’t too shabby either. I’m looking forward to working on this tree in 2016, and will post updates as it progresses.
Here’s a specimen that had enough fibrous roots to go straight to a bonsai pot. The trunk base is 2″ and the height is 12″ to the chop. I think this nice Byron Myrick oval works really well with it.
I anticipate plentiful trunk buds on this one come spring, meaning I shouldn’t have any problem creating a branch structure. In a few years, this will be a showable hawthorn bonsai.
Same story with this one. Again, enough fibrous roots to go straight to a bonsai pot. This one is a Chuck Iker round, very nice. The trunk base of this tree is 1.75″ and it’s 15″ to the chop.
If you haven’t worked with hawthorn as a species yet, I highly recommend it. They’re not hard to collect, if you gather your own – the wood is pretty tough, but I use a cordless reciprocating saw. If you’re not into collecting your own, keep an eye on our Hawthorn page as spring gets closer.
Hawthorns backbud very well and grow quickly, which makes training a breeze. All of the species have small leaves, and leaf size reduces even further in bonsai training. I haven’t found there to be any peculiar horticultural requirements for them – you’ll get aphids from time to time and mealybugs, but they’re easy enough to kill.
One final note: I did not lose a single hawthorn in my Winter 2014 ice-snow-freeze disaster. They’re really hardy!
