Pasture Privet Parade

by | Jun 21, 2020 | Care, Collecting, Flowering, Most Recent, Privet

pasture privet parade

the bonsai files

Sneak Peek

Cow pastures are the best place to collect Chinese privet. Cattle browse the soft foliage, and in time this produces specimens with great character ….

Pasture Privet Parade

 

Did you know that cow pastures are the best place to collect Chinese privet? Of course you did, I just said that in the Sneak Peek above. Here’s the thing. Privet is a fast growing broadleaf evergreen or, as some would prefer to say, a fast-growing noxious weed. They grow fast and straight with an untapering trunk or (quite) often many untapering trunks. If you were growing one in the ground, ideally you’d go out every day or three with your hedge trimmers and give it a whack. That’s a lot of work, and you’d have to do it for at least 10 years to get a good result. Unlikely to happen, right?

If you live in a part of the country that’s been invaded by privet, and you have access to cow pastures where they tend to grow near the fencelines, it’s a likely place to find nice specimens. The cows browse. The privets keep on coming back. The process continues. Over time, you end up with privet specimens that have good to great trunk taper and really nice character.

A week ago I harvested about a dozen pasture privets. Here are a handful that are already back-budding. This first one is a good example of a tapering specimen with terrific character that will make a fine small bonsai in short order.

A “Siamese twin trunk” specimen. The two trunks are fused and twisting, and will make an unusual but striking bonsai once developed.

This is one of the larger specimens I brought home. Trunk movement doesn’t happen by itself with privet, so it’s clear to me that this one has been worked on by cattle for the better part of 20 years.

We always want our trees to look older than they really are. This one is old to begin with, but even if it wasn’t the mottled coloring of the trunk would make it look old.

How about this twin-trunk? With a base 2″ across but only standing about 6″ to the higher chop, we’re looking at a very fine shohin bonsai to be.

How about this one? You can almost feel the tough times this privet has been through. It’s another shohin specimen, but will pack a lot of character in a small space once it’s developed.

And the last one for today. You can’t beat the trunk movement and taper, and there’s natural shari on the side and in back. I’m really looking forward to styling this one.

So let me know what you think of my pasture privet parade. If you haven’t grown Chinese privet as bonsai, you should give one a try.

Bonsai Odds & Ends – Oak, Privet, Crape Myrtle

by | May 30, 2020 | Care, Crape myrtle, Most Recent, Oaks, Privet, Pruning, Styling, Wiring

bonsai odds & ends – oak, privet, crape myrtle

the bonsai files

Sneak Peak

This is the time of year to be doing rapid development of many of our trees, due to their robust growth. Here are a Water oak, a Chinese privet and a Crape myrtle that moved closer to “bonsai-ness” with a little pruning and wiring.

Bonsai Odds & Ends – Oak, Privet, Crape Myrtle

I collected this Water oak earlier this year, and once it got established it just took off. I’ve had to trim it some already. With that kind of strength, the obvious thing to do was go ahead and work up an initial design.

First order of business: make that horizontal chop an angle chop.

This is quick work with a trunk splitter and knob cutter. Notice how much better this tree looks already.

There aren’t but a few branches on this tree (plus the leader) to work with. Is that a problem? Not really. The trunk chop was made 7″ above the soil, and the tree has a base of 1.75″. If the finished height of the tree ends up, say, at 16″ then the first branch will be in an okay spot and the majority of the branches will end up in the new leader anyway.

How about that low branch? I’m not sure if this is going to make a workable design element, but if you look at trees in the wild (especially oaks) they tend to have both a main trunk line and secondary trunk lines that fork off the main trunk. This one may be too low, but then again if it turns into something unique then so much the better.

This is a small Chinese privet I was able to chop to a rapidly tapering trunk line (7″ above the soil). When you get an opportunity like this, you take it. I love well-proportioned shohin bonsai.

Fast-forward a few minutes, and this bonsai in the making is trimmed, wired and shaped. It’ll grow out quickly enough to allow slip-potting in the next month.

This is a white-flowering Crape myrtle I grew from a cutting several years ago. Due to living its entire life in a nursery pot, the trunk has just reached 1″ at the soil. But … it’s going to make a cool shohin specimen.

The big takeaway from this example is how you can use a sacrifice branch/leader to thicken the base of a specimen, while at the same time working on a design that will ultimately become your tree. But there’s a caution you need to be aware of. That leader is taking 90% of the energy generated in the roots, meaning the ultimate tree is getting very little. This means you have the risk of losing branches you may have worked on for years. So there are limits to what you can do with a sacrifice branch. If you use this technique, you have to keep a close watch on the entire tree.

Here we are post-sacrifice of the sacrifice branch. This little tree is now on its way to a more complete design, now that the energy is going to be redirected.

Incidentally, I’d like to encourage you to use a saw rather than concave cutters when removing larger branches from a Crape. Even with a very sharp tool, the wood will break rather than cut smoothly. This forces you to come back and carve even if you don’t plan to. The saw makes a nice smooth cut. Get yourself a Japanese bonsai saw, which cuts on the pull stroke. It’s an indispensable tool.

More Collecting, A Couple More Examples

by | Dec 15, 2019 | Care, Collecting, Elms, Potting, Privet
Here’s a quick update for today – a balmy Deep South winter day, high 75, meaning the weather wasn’t miserable for lifting trees. This triple-trunk Chinese privet, Ligustrum sinense, is actually a connected root specimen. The trunks are nice, with great taper, and the one on the right has beautiful movement. The small trunk in front is also pretty gnarly, but I’m not sure I can keep it considering its position and the fact that this needs to be the front of the future bonsai. But that can be decided later on. For a sense of scale the largest trunk is 1.5″, the next 1″ and the smallest 3/4″. Height of the tallest is 5″ at the chop. This one has a lot in a small package.
I’ve had this Zelkova, Zelkova serrata, in the ground for a few years now. Last year I chopped the trunk to build taper. The trunk base has reached just over 1″, so I decided to go ahead and get another specimen going for the 2020 inventory. I’ve got others still in the ground that I’ll continue to grow out.
Potted up and trimmed a little more. The tree is chopped at 10.5″, but that’s just until it buds in spring. I’ll re-chop to a leader that’s in the right spot relative to the transition point. For now, I want to protect the leader from dieback. For those of you who haven’t worked with Zelkovas, I can highly recommend the species. They grow very quickly, as many elms do, and this allows you to create a showable bonsai in just two or three years. This one already has some branching I should be able to use to create a design. But I’ll wait till spring to wire it, to give the roots a chance to firm up.

Layering To Improve Trunk Base And Rootage – Privet

by | Nov 2, 2019 | Care, Privet, Soil

It’s not uncommon to have a less than stellar base or rootage on your bonsai. This Chinese privet, Ligustrum sinense, is a good example. The tree is nice, for sure, and will be just about fully developed next year after a good start this year, but there’s an issue at the base in front that just doesn’t add to the tree’s appearance. In situations like this you’ve got a couple of choices: carve until it looks better or “work around” the objectionable area.

Privets don’t lend themselves to carving, especially low on the trunk, as the wood has a tendency to get punky and rot out after a few years. If you do utilize carving on a Privet specimen, be sure to have some PC Petrifier wood hardener on hand. You’ll need it sooner rather than later.

So in the case of this tree, I’ll need to “work around” the problem at the base. And what better way than to layer the tree?

Once you’ve figured out where you want the new roots to emerge from the trunk, you’ll need to carve a band of bark and cambium all the way around. It’s vital to take the cambium with the bark, otherwise the tree will only produce callus tissue over the wounded area and you won’t get the roots you want.
The view from the other side. I made the band pretty wide, and you don’t want to learn the hard way why this is done. Callus tissue will form at the top of the band. If the band is too narrow, the callus will bridge it and simply heal the wound you made, in preference to producing roots from the area.
After dusting the top of the stripped area with rooting powder, I used this high-tech method of making a “pot” for my new roots to occupy. It’s literally a nursery pot that’s had the bottom cut out, been cut to wrap around the trunk, and bound with good old duct tape. There’s nothing like simplicity!
The makeshift “pot” is filled with soil and watered. All I need to do now is wait.

You’re probably wondering if this is a good time of year to do this work. For most species the answer would be no. Privet is semi-deciduous down South, so there will be active root growth through much of the winter. If I’m lucky, by the time spring gets kicked off next year it won’t take long to produce enough roots to allow me to separate the layer. I’ll update when that happens.

Privet Work And Slip-Potting

by | Sep 7, 2019 | Care, Potting, Privet, Pruning, Styling
Privets seldom disappoint. This one has put on a lot of growth in just a couple of months, and I can tell by the strength of it that a slip-potting now shouldn’t cause any problem for it. But first, some design work.
Most bonsai design work is “grow and clip,” regardless of how you approach a tree. Wiring is certainly important for branch placement, but you’ll prune and pinch many more times than you’ll wire any tree. In this photo, you can see how much growth I’ve removed.
The final step before potting this tree is to bring in the profile. It’s often hard to make yourself cut a tree back as much as it needs to be, but over time you get better at making those decisions.
And that’s all it took! This privet is going to fill out in 2020, and should bloom for the first time in 2021. Let me know what you think by leaving a comment below.

Bonsai Odds & Ends – Water Oak and Privet

by | Aug 18, 2019 | Care, Oaks, Privet, Pruning, Styling, Wiring

You’ve been following the development of this Water oak (Quercus nigra) since last year. The tree was collected in February of 2018, but failed to bud except in one spot. The obvious answer was to make bonsai lemonade out of that lemon.

Here’s the tree last November, after a good whacking. Because I had good taper where the transition was, I didn’t hesitate to pot the tree in this Byron Myrick rectangle.
Now we’re a year from the first photo above, and the branch development is clearly robust. I like the way the proportions of the tree are coming along. The only chore to be done today is to do some strategic pruning.
With a few branches taken off, and the overlong branches trimmed back, you can get a much better sense of where I’m going. I’ve left the leader alone, in order to continue to beef it up all along its length. That will be vital in making this a believable bonsai. I’m beginning to question the value of the low left branch in the final design, but I’m not willing to take it off yet. What do you think? Does it add to the design?

Here’s the next Chinese privet (Ligustrum sinense) that gets styled. I’m always amazed at how fast they grow.

Easy peasy.
I love it when I run across a specimen I can chop to make a short, fat bonsai out of. This one has a 1.5″ trunk base and is chopped at 4.5″. I can make the whole design in under 10″.
And one last privet for today. This one also has a 1.5″ trunk, but is chopped at 8.5″. It’ll make a nice 12″ tall bonsai. I collected this one and the one above on July 28th. I’m betting I’ll be wiring both of them next month.