Bald Cypress Collecting Trip #2 For 2021

by | Jan 9, 2021 | Bald Cypress, Care, Collecting, Most Recent, Potting

bald cypress collecting trip #2 for 2021

the bonsai files

Sneak Peek

This week we went for larger specimens.

Bald Cypress Collecting Trip #2 for 2021

This is the sort of tree I’m not supposed to be collecting anymore. But doggone, it was just something I couldn’t pass up! Isn’t the fluting impressive, and you can’t do better than a nice twisting trunk.

It wouldn’t fit in the small concrete mixing tubs I often use for BC. This is one of the big tubs. What that means is, the tree and tub weight pretty close to 100 pounds. That’s why I’m not supposed to be collecting trees this big anymore. Oh, well….

I know you’re wondering – the trunk is 8″ across when measured 8″ above the soil surface, and it’s chopped at 36″. The root spread will be around 14″ once the tree is lifted for its bonsai pot.

What a great BC specimen!

This one is more manageable. The trunk is only 5.5″ across, and it’s chopped at 31″. Also great fluting, and this one has also got a bit of a twist to the trunk.

The first tree above and especially this one came with a dense mat of fibrous roots. This one was so bad it took me the better part of an hour to work through them and cut away what I won’t need. The result was worth it, though.

The base here is 7″ across, and it’s chopped at 34″. Great taper, of course.

I thought I’d include a shot of what should be the back of this tree. The trunk has a very impressive pair of flutes from this angle. I don’t think this is a better front, just because of how the tree moves and the fact that the other angle has a great root flare at the soil. But maybe someone will give it a try.

Bald Cypress Collecting Trip #1 For 2021

by | Jan 2, 2021 | Bald Cypress, Care, Collecting, Most Recent, Potting

bald cypress collecting trip #1 for 2021

the bonsai files

Sneak Peek

Happy New Year! Time to go collect some new BC’s.

Bald Cypress Collecting Trip #1 for 2021

I don’t like this time of year at all, but then again it’s the best time to collect Bald cypress. The weather was cool, the rain passed on New Year’s eve, so you couldn’t ask for better.

This is the largest specimen of the 11 we brought home today. The base is about 5″ across, and it’s chopped a bit tall at 29″. Good fluting on the trunk, and outstanding taper. I’m seeing formal upright all the way with this one.

This is another nice specimen, with a base of 3.5″ and also good fluting. I really like the trunk movement. But this one has an unusual feature I’m not sure whether to keep or not.

You probably noticed that odd root jutting out on the right side. The single jutting root doesn’t do anything for most BC’s, but this one has a “proto-knee” on it where it emerges from the trunk. I’ll call it an elbow. Does it stay or does it go? I imagine I’ll let whoever buys it make that choice.

Here’s another good size tree, with a trunk base of 4″ and chopped at 28″. It’ll make a fine informal upright, or even a nice flat-top.

And the final example for today, a smaller specimen that has some great movement and graceful taper. I chopped this one long on purpose; it’s definitely destined for the flat-top design.

We’ll be back out next week for more BC’s. In the meantime, let me know what you think about these.

Bonsai Odds & Ends – Fall Arrives

by | Sep 20, 2020 | Bald Cypress, Care, Jade, Most Recent, Potting, Privet, Styling

bonsai odds & ends – fall arrives

the bonsai files

Sneak Peek

There comes a point in the season where you can feel the change coming, yet it doesn’t quite. Then there comes a point where it just happens. Today fall arrived.

Bonsai Odds & Ends – Fall Arrives

Our heat broke a few days ago, and to be sure we’ve noticed signs of the season changing for a few weeks now (sinus-driven!). But today came a cold, light rain, the sort that taps you on the shoulder and says “Fall’s here.” Yes, it’s here. We can count on at least one warm snap between now and Christmas, but no matter: the growing season is effectively over.

In today’s post are a few trees I felt like commenting on. This Bald cypress was collected back in January and though it came out on schedule it plodded along until July. At that point we got another push of growth, and that told me the tree was going to be all right. The other day I decided to go ahead and start work on it. The plan is for a flat-top, which should proceed quickly in 2021.

But where’s the front? This is one possibility.

 

 

 

I think this may be a better front. It doesn’t matter right now, the styling will go the same. But which do you prefer?

I’m very pleased with this guy. It got defoliated back in July, and the regrowth was picture-perfect. I’m confident I’ll be able to just about complete the crown in 2021. After five years of training, this one is in the home stretch. (I’ve also commissioned a pot for it, so that will happen in 2021 as well.)

 

 

 

This pasture privet – along with all of its brothers – has kept on growing and will continue until it’s just too cold to keep on. The styling has gone quickly and quite well. I just wired that small branch on the right-hand side down near the base, and I think it’s going to add to the design.

I started working on this Spekboom last year. My goal was to directionally prune, and the tree cooperated very nicely; I have four changes of direction now in the upright trunk. It also threw a sub-trunk which I figured was ideal for thickening the base, so I just let it run all season. I’ve been toying with potting this specimen for weeks now, and today I brought it to the workbench determined to make it happen. In the course of studying it, I thought maybe the best thing to do with it was to make a semi-cascade specimen. I had this Chuck Iker square on the shelf, and I think the whole design worked out pretty well.

Obviously there’s plenty of work to do on the cascading branch. I plan to use directional pruning on it in 2021. Stay tuned for updates.

I imagine many of you are already experiencing outright cold weather, and possibly even some snow. I’m not there yet, but it won’t be long before I’m putting some trees to bed for the winter.

 

Time To Overpot A Spekboom – Again

by | Sep 2, 2020 | Care, Jade, Most Recent, Potting, Pruning, Styling

time to overpot a spekboom – again

the bonsai files

Sneak Peek

The Spekboom, or Dwarf jade, is a wonderful bonsai subject. They’re almost impossible to kill (if you don’t freeze them in winter), and they grow vigorously in the summer heat. That means you have to repot them pretty frequently.

Time to Overpot a Spekboom – Again

A year ago this Spekboom, which started off as my original nub of a cutting back in 2018, got overpotted into this neat little Kintsugi pot. It was starting to look like something, and I figured it could use some room to grow.

(Some of you may be wondering what criteria I’m relying on to pronounce this specimen overpotted. There are two in this case: one, the pot is almost as long as the tree is tall – typically you’re looking for a pot that’s one-half to two-thirds as long as the tree is tall; and two, the height of the pot in profile is roughly five times the trunk thickness at the base – these measurements should be very close to one another.)

 

 

 

Here’s how the tree had progressed by December of last year. You can see it’s filling out well – the ultimate shape (broom-form) is getting established.

And now a year has passed since the first photo above was taken. Take a few seconds to compare the two shots. In addition to becoming more or less a bush (an elephant bush?!), notice how much thicker the trunk has gotten. My eyeball says 50% or better.

Now this is pretty remarkable. Once trees get into bonsai pots, they don’t typically put on much trunk heft. That’s what you get when you grow out trees in the ground. Yet here’s this relatively small Spekboom (just over 12″ tall) growing in a rather confined space and its trunk is thickening! Well, I’m pretty excited about that.

The other thing you may or may not have noticed is that the pot this tree is in is now somewhat small in its surface area relative to the mass of the tree. When I picked it up to take it to the work bench, it was very distinctly top-heavy. Your typical bonsai should have a good balance to it when you lift it from the bench; it shouldn’t feel like it’ll tip over if you accidentally incline it one way or the other. This one for sure did.

So the first order of business today was to trim back the rank growth and open the tree up – meaning remove crossing branches and branches that have no future; downward pointing branches and upward pointing branches that have no future; and so on, to further refine the design.

This is the ticket. Leave about half that foliage on the bench!

The final step for today was to overpot this tree yet again – as they say, I have a plan!

But first, a little history on this unique pot. Back in the early 90’s I discovered Richard Robertson, a.k.a. Rockpot Pottery up in Maine (Richard passed a few years ago). Richard was one of who knows how many American potters doing bonsai pots, in an era where the level of interest was much less than today. I started ordering from him regulary, because he did great work and I thought my trees deserved nice settings. In those days the Internet was not yet with us, and so you either ordered from a catalog (by mail!) or by phone. I would order from Richard pretty regularly, to get a variety of sizes, styles and glazes so I’d have the stock I needed when it was time to pot up trees I was working on. But what came in was sight unseen.

I remember clearly when I unpacked this pot. It has a lovely, creamy matte finish, the glaze with hints of gray, blue and brown. I thought it looked like a mushroom because of the color and finish, and I still do. But the odd part is, over the past 30 years I haven’t come across a tree that goes really well with the pot. It’s more a white pot than anything else, and only certain species look good in a white pot. I’m thinking Spekboom may be one of them.

So this guy is now overpotted again and on to the next phase of development. My goal is a taller and heftier tree. With the space available in the pot, I’m thinking by this time next year I should have a much more substantial specimen. If all goes well, I’ll be posting about it again by that time.

Meanwhile, I’d love to hear what you think. This is one of my favorites, if for no other reason than it cheers me up sitting on my desk when winter arrives.

Chinese Elm Forest Fun

by | Aug 23, 2020 | Care, Chinese Elm, Elms, Most Recent, Potting, Styling

chinese elm forest fun

the bonsai files

Sneak Peek

Forest bonsai are great fun to make. As long as you have a bunch of trees that look like they go together (straight trunks/crooked trunks, various size trunks, similar trunk character), you can make a presentable forest in minutes.

Chinese Elm Forest Fun

I’ve had this Chinese elm group on the bench since I lifted it early this year. I figured someone might want to make a quick forest out of it, but nobody bit. So I figured I’d do the job myself. Here it was at the beginning of the project. I’ve done a good bit of trimming on this group during 2020, starting the process of directing growth where I need it. Chinese elms grow super fast, so you can make a lot of headway in a short time. This one did not disappoint.

 

 

 

The first order of business was to do more selective trimming, to get the group ready for the tray. Low branching on the large trees was removed, crossing branches removed, and I brought in a lot of the branches to improve the proportions of each trunk.

Usually when you make a forest planting, you have to use all eight or ten of your hands to hold all of those trunks in place when all they want to do is fall down. Yeah, that never works of course. The good news with this group is, all I had to do was remove enough root above and below to produce a rounded “ground surface” that fit well in the tray. It’s common to mound forests, it makes them look more realistic.

Don’t forget those forest principles, like making sure the trunks don’t hide one another. This is true not only from the front view, but also the side views.

This side, too. I need to fix those crossing trunks, but that will happen when I do the final positioning.

I did a final adjustment of the trees, a little more trimming, and then filled in the tray with soil. This is a nice forest, if I do say so myself. But wait, there’s one more step.

Doesn’t the moss just make this look like a real forest? It also serves the purpose of retaining moisture, which is important while the group gets used to its new home.

I hope you like this Chinese elm forest bonsai-in-training as much as I do. Next season it’s going to fill out and ramify very quickly. If it speaks to you, it’s available in our Shop and ships in late September.

Design Principles: Is It A Tree Or An Abstract Tree?

by | Aug 15, 2020 | Care, Most Recent, Potting, Privet, Pruning, Styling, Wiring

design principles: is it a tree or an abstract tree?

the bonsai files

Sneak Peek

A bonsai is literally a tree in a tray. But as I’m sure we can all agree, it’s far more than that. But what exactly is it? A tree or an abstract tree? The best way to answer this question may be by considering the shohin bonsai.

Design Principles: Is it a Tree or an Abstract Tree?

So here’s another one of my pasture privets that I dug in June. Very cool lower trunk damage (character!), nice taper and movement, all in a small package – the trunk was chopped at about 6″. There’s plenty of growth and plenty of roots to style and pot this tree, so that’s the goal for today with this one.

But let’s talk about design principles and what bonsai is all about. Bonsai is the art and craft of designing, potting and maintaining miniature trees. That’s pretty straightforward as it goes. But what exactly is it we’re creating? Is it a tree or something else?

I ask the question because the objective fact is that no bonsai is an exact representation of a tree in nature on a small scale. Why? Take an 80 foot-tall tree with a two-foot trunk diameter near the ground. For a bonsai with a 2″ trunk base, you’re talking an 80″ tall bonsai. Well, we know that isn’t the way bonsai works. So we’re compressing the proportions into a manageable scale and tricking the brain into believing something that isn’t objectively so.

The next thing to consider is how many branches a bonsai has. This varies, of course, but suffice it to say that almost always a bonsai has far fewer branches than a tree in nature. But this is necessary due to the limited scale in which we have to operate.

Nowhere is this more exaggerated than in the shohin bonsai. Which brings us to today’s subjects. Count the branches on this very small tree. What are there, maybe eight? And we’re going to make a whole tree out of that?

 

Yes, that’s exactly it. I even started by removing two branches, one that was an extra down near that right-hand branch, and one that was jutting out toward us. Neither was of any use in the ultimate design. But look, I’ve actually created two branches for this bonsai to be that make the impression I want to make.

Right branch, left branch, back branch. Now I’ve introduced visual depth into this tree structure I’m making. You always need this in your bonsai, in order to trick the brain into seeing a three-dimensional tree in a very small space. We create perspective by foreshortening from front to back and using taper from base to apex to make the tree look a lot taller than it is.

Now the basic design is finished. There are five branches (there’s one in the back below the two upper branches that’s a bit hard to see), plus the leader. That’s all. Yet it’s not at all hard to see a tree in this very small package. It’s an abstract tree, for sure, but it can produce exactly the effect I want.

With the bonsai pot, of course. The function of the bonsai pot is to complete the abstract impression of size and viewing distance in our tree. Viewing distance is achieved by the shallow pot that is reminiscent of a slice of ground (this effect just does not happen in a deep nursery container – put one beside a potted bonsai and you’ll see the difference immediately). Note: the cascade pot is designed to represent a slice of mountainside, producing the same effect of viewing distance.

This tree will fill out over the next couple of months, and by that time we’ll be heading into fall. Privets retain a good bit of their foliage through winter down here in the South, but are deciduous in the North.

Okay, maybe you were thinking that the tree above was, in the end, a pretty easy subject. I had enough branches in the right spots to make a whole tree structure. I can’t argue that. But take a look at this one. How in the world do you make a whole tree out of just a few branches?

Here’s how I did it. I’m going to make use of that low branch, which actually emerges pretty far down on the trunk; when it’s filled out I’ll have a good bit of foliage all the way from the lower third of the tree into the crown – both front and back. That next branch up the tree gives me visual balance on the right-hand side, and I can finish off the crown in just a few branches. Abstract tree!

Do you grow shohin bonsai? I’d love to hear what you think of these two specimens.