by Zach Smith | Dec 31, 2015 | Care, Oaks, Potting, Soil
I’ve shown you this willow oak, Quercus phellos, a couple of times before. It sprouted as a volunteer seedling in an old garden area well over 10 years ago, and has been growing there ever since. I didn’t start cutting it back until I moved my garden and pulled up the concrete blocks surrounding this and other trees. That’s when I noticed its potential. What struck me especially about this specimen was the lovely twin trunks. They’re fused together perfectly, just like a young married couple.
In my study of this specimen, it occurred to me that there’s a limit to how thick I’d be able to grow the trunk, for the simple reason that there needs to remain an ample spread between the trunks. The thicker this trunk gets, the more the spread closes. So to preserve this critical feature, I decided to lift it today so it can begin its life as a bonsai.
The first order of business was to cut it back, to allow me to get in and saw it out of the ground. You can see the potential of this tree a lot better with only this much work having been done.
The tree was out of the ground in just a few minutes. Here’s a shot of it after I washed all the native soil off the roots.
You can see, in the photo before and this one, that I have a couple of choices in my lateral roots. This is a common thing with trees you lift. All too often, however, the second, lower set of roots emerges from a trunk that is smaller in diameter than the trunk above the top set of roots. This inverse taper is extremely difficult to correct; usually the only answer is to layer the tree down the road. In this case, I’m in luck. The trunk base is actually slightly thicker below the higher set of roots. This makes my choice an easy one, even more so because I have three well-spaced lateral roots to provide visual stability. So I took off the higher set of roots, cut back the lower ones more proportionally and potted the tree.
Here’s the final result. I love the color of this rounded-corner Byron Myrick rectangle. Willow oak leaves often turn a bright yellow in fall – certainly more reliably so, farther north than I am. This should make for a great complement when the time comes.
If you’d like to take on the development of this willow oak, the tree is available at our new Oak Bonsai sale page. The trunk base is 2″ in diameter at the soil surface, and it’s 13.5″ in height to the taller of the two chops. The finished height should be roughly 16-18″. The lateral roots are buried to protect them. The tree can be lifted slightly to expose these roots at the first repotting.
by Zach Smith | Dec 23, 2015 | Care, Flowering, Potting, Privet, Pruning
As you know, Chinese privet, Ligustrum sinense, is one of my favorite species to create bonsai out of. They grow fast, the leaves are naturally small, and they bloom readily in a pot. Because they’re naturalized where I live, I have ready access to material – even on my own property from volunteer seedlings.
When I cleared off some property a couple of years ago to expand my nursery (and my backyard), there were a few specimens of privet “hanging around” a few of the stumps that we left. If you’ve ever tried to recover a piece of material that’s snuggled into an oak root, I suspect you gave up after some frustrating poking, sawing and levering. The piece below was one of those cases: I first tried to coax it out from its protective oak stump last year. It didn’t budge. But I knew that time was on my side, because the stump was going to rot.
Today, for some reason, in the waning light two days before Christmas, I decided to have another whack at the monster – this one has a root base is 9″ across from trunk to trunk and 6″ deep. The tallest trunk is 14″ to the chop.
I snapped this photo before the darkness overtook me. Everything you see is connected. The trunks have some nice taper and interplay. And I know exactly how I’m going to grow the crown. This will be about a three-year project.
The nebari is awesome from the front side. As you might expect, the back was curved to fit its previous home and as a result there’s no rootage there yet. It should grow on its own in the pot, however.
by Zach Smith | Dec 20, 2015 | Care, Potting, Pruning, Styling, Wiring, Yaupon
I’ve commented before that our native yaupon, Ilex vomitoria, makes an excellent bonsai subject. The only problem I’ve encountered through the years is that very, very few specimens in the wild grow with any natural taper. This obviously limits the material that can be collected and developed into bonsai in a short time.
This specimen caught my eye back in January of 2014 because it had a nice old gnarly trunk base with some interesting deadwood. True to form, the existing trunks were arrow-straight. I chopped the trunks and figured I’d grow the tree more or less from scratch. Yapon buds well on old wood, even if you don’t leave any foliage on it. So I was able to take this one through a few rounds of grow and clip, and this is where I was with it this past August. As you can see, it’s starting to take shape.
Four months later, I’m getting a nice primary branch structure on each of my trunks. Also, the tapering transition for each of the original four is looking very smooth. A little carving will help the process along. So I can go ahead and pot this yaupon without concern.
Here’s the tree in its “training pot,” a nice rectangle I got from Chuck Iker three years ago. The reason this pot has been relegated to the training category is simple though odd: in Winter 2014, during our big snow and ice storm, this pot literally froze to the bench. When I went to move it and its tree to a safer location, a couple of the feet stayed on the bench! Super glue put them back on, but the pot remains imperfect as a result.
And here’s the final result, after some wiring and shaping. This yaupon will fill in fast in 2016. I think it’s got fantastic potential.
If you’d like a nice multi-trunk yaupon for your bench, this tree is available at our Miscellaneous Bonsai sale page.
by Zach Smith | Nov 24, 2015 | Care, Hornbeam, Potting, Pruning
I think this is a significant American hornbeam (Carpinus Caroliniana) bonsai in training. With a trunk base measuring 6″ near the soil surface and a projected final height of 30-32″, great nebari and taper, and characteristic muscular trunk, what’s not to like about this tree? Nothing, really. But there’s a lot of work that needs doing as this bonsai enters the next stage of its development – it was dug in Winter 2010, got an initial wiring once new shoots had formed that same year, then was initially potted three years ago. During this time I worked on building the tapering transition in the apex, grow-and-chop by grow-and-chop.
This tree needs repotting next spring. It could have been repotted this past spring but I had other, more pressing chores. (Hornbeam roots very vigorously, so I generally recommend repotting every second year.)
Before I pull the tree from its pot, however, there are some significant chores that need doing. If you look closely at the upper trunk area, the tapering transition is not at all bad except for what looks like a “shoulder” where the original chop was made. This basically needs to be carved down to make the transition look better.
Here’s a closeup of the area I’ll be carving in the apex. It began as a straight chop when the tree was first collected. Once the new leader had grown strong enough, I made an angled cut. Once the healing began, I did some initial carving of the wood inside the rolling callus. That was four years ago.
Now I need to undertake the next carving project in this area. By angling the cut downward and taking off the “shoulder” on the left-hand side that makes the tapering look awkward, I should get the appearance I want. It’ll take several years to heal the way I need it to, but that’s not a problem. Time is always on the side of a maturing bonsai.
Here’s another carving project whose time has come. When the tree was originally collected, there was a second trunk emerging from the spot you see in the photo (it was hollow inside and destined to die, and certainly of no use to my design plan). I cut it back, but was careful not to make the cut too close to the trunk in order to prevent dieback down the trunk on that side. I was blessed with a bud beneath it, in a great spot for a primary branch and available to feed the roots on that side. I’ve worked on that branch since and refrained from carving the old trunk stump so as not to risk its health. Spring 2016 will be the time to take it back with my Dremel®.
As with any tree, there are always minor problems that eventually bother you enough that you decide to correct them. In the case of this tree, I have a thick branch in the crown of the tree and a bit of reverse taper in one of the apical curves. I think both of these problems can be solved without overly dramatic cutting; but I’ll make these decisions next spring while everything else in happening.
And finally, just to complete the record, a shot of the tree from the back. I’m very pleased with this hornbeam specimen; it’s truly one of the finest pieces I’ve worked on in my bonsai career.
Let me know what you think of this tree. I’d love to hear from you.
by Zach Smith | Nov 22, 2015 | Care, Chinese Elm, Elms, Potting, Pruning, Wiring
Chinese elms, Ulmus parfivolia, grow quickly in the ground and this is how I grow all of my Chinese elm material with the exception of trees intended for forest plantings. In 2014 I lifted a specimen I’d had in the ground for a few years to see how quickly I could move it from raw material to presentable bonsai. The lift was made in late winter, and I put the tree directly into a bonsai pot (which I knew would slow down the process, but that didn’t concern me).
In August of last year, the chopped stump had produced shoots long enough to be wired, and I had a good enough set that I could create a suitable structure right from the start.
It doesn’t look like much, does it? But every bonsai begins with a tree that has either grown in the wild from a seed ultimately becoming a stump/trunk/clump/etc., or in “captivity” from seed or cutting, or in the ground from seed or cutting with more or less management by the grower as it develops. Having grown many hundreds of bonsai through the years, the prospect of taking a bare trunk all the way to a finished bonsai does not discourage me in the least. In fact, it’s one of the more pleasurable pursuits I can think of.
Following this initial styling, I simply left the tree alone (being mindful of the thickening of branch and leader so as to remove the wire at the proper time) for the rest of the 2014 growing season.
This is what had happened by early July of 2015. I needed the strongest growth in the new apex of the tree, and that’s just what I got. Though the tree would have grown this way on its own, trying to get taller, I helped the process along by keeping the energy in the lower branches directed toward ramification. The structure of each lateral branch was easily built during this growing season.
The next step for this tree was to cut back the new leader in order to ensure that the tapering transition at the original chop, roughly 9″ from the soil surface, would end up looking right. The trunk as lifted had gentle taper, not as dramatic as I may have liked, so the trick in finishing out the trunk will be to continue the gentle taper yet bring it to completion at a final height of about 16″.
After the chop. This looks pretty funny, doesn’t it? But building taper in your trunk or branches requires cutting back hard after a period of unrestrained growth. It’s how this trunk got to where it was before I lifted it. So after allowing the leader to grow for almost a year, I had a long section measuring almost 6″ which had zero taper. What’s more, I had only one way to induce taper into this section of new trunk, namely letting sacrifice branches grow. While this was certainly doable, it wasn’t the fastest or even the best way. Growing a new leader was the obvious choice.
In this final photo you can see the next stage beginning for this tree. I got a few buds on the truncated leader that I allowed to grow unrestrained. Since it was late in the season, they were only able to extend about 6″ before dormancy hit. But in 2016, I’ll let one of them run wild and I’m betting the original transition will start looking much better. The thickness of the first new leader should double next year.
So this is a year in the development of a Chinese elm bonsai. I expect that in another two years I should have the rest of the trunk built, along with a lot more of the lateral branching. By year four, this tree will be fully built.
by Zach Smith | Oct 24, 2015 | Bald Cypress, Care, Flowering, Oaks, Potting
I first met Allen Gautreau (“Go Tro” – it’s one of those Cajun names) in 1986, when my rekindled interest in bonsai had me seeking out local enthusiasts. He was new to the art, as was I. While I don’t recall that many details of our early encounters, I know we went on at least one collecting trip together and a nursery hunt.
The latter occasion got Allen this crape myrtle, dug from a field growing bed at an eclectic nursery outside of Baton Rouge. His notes say I helped him. The tree isn’t huge, so I suspect my help was limited to the selection process. Regardless, he worked on it over the next few decades and the tree is now a very mature bonsai that has come into my care. I think it’s got great character. Better still, it has great meaning for me.
By 1989 I had advanced enough in my study and practice of bonsai that I decided to begin teaching classes. My first class consisted of three beginners; Allen was one of them. As I recall, the course was three sessions long, each one lasting four or five hours. But memory fades, so I could certainly be off on my numbers.
No one who lives in the Deep South and loves bonsai doesn’t want a nice live oak bonsai. Problem is, they aren’t that easy to collect. On the other hand, they take to container life very well and are easy to train. Given their great features, I often wonder why more artists don’t grow the species.
Allen usually acquired his live oak pre-bonsai from nurseries selling end-of-season inventory on the cheap. These landscape-bound trees would be chopped down to just a few inches in most cases, then a new compact trunk grown in the “grow and chop” fashion. He worked with a number of specimens over the years that were created this way. A few years ago he gave me one of these trees that had been chopped and trained in the common live oak style, a short main trunk with multiple sub-trunks flaring off from it, some sweeping down to the ground. I reduced the root mass drastically and placed the tree in a shallow tray, to emphasize its style, and was working on development of the multiple sub-trunks when Winter 2014 hit. Alas, my gifted live oak bonsai didn’t survive.
I think that’s why Allen wanted me to have this tree to care for. I’m not sure if this is the only one he actually collected from the wild, but there couldn’t have been that many. His notes say it was dug in 1997, cut back and training begun. Here it is, 18 years later. In 2009 it was worked on in a session with Joe Day, and repotted in 2011, 2012 and 2014. The maturity of the structure of this tree is good testimony to the great work Allen put into it.
And finally, no bonsai collection is complete without bald cypress – doesn’t matter where you live. This forest was started in 2010. I don’t know its entire story, but one tree was replaced and one died and was transformed into a feature of the forest. All in all, though, it’s a nice rendition of a swamp scene. And the tray is a signature Tokoname piece.
One of the most appealing things about the art of bonsai is we often work with tree species that possess the capacity to outlive us (often by far!). While it’s easy to observe that as we learn bonsai we tend to kill a lot of trees, still the thought of having bonsai that can outlive us is testimony to the human spirit. We’re all just passing through this life, but we all have the opportunity to leave something of ourselves to the world and make it a better place. Allen did just that. Rest in the Lord’s embrace, old friend.
