by Zach Smith | Nov 29, 2015 | Care, Elms, Pruning, Sweetgum, Water Elm
The only thing I envy about my fellow bonsai artists from up North is the fall color they get to enjoy on their deciduous trees. In the Deep South we typically don’t get a lot of fall color. When we do, it arrives suddenly – this weekend for 2015, to be precise – then the leaves all fall within a few days and winter ugliness begins. I was pleased this year to see a little fall color in my garden, and wanted to share a couple of trees with you.
Here’s the sweetgum I recently posted for sale. One reason I love sweetgum is that it’s one of only a few species that will actually produce reds and purples in fall down here. We mostly get yellows and browns, which are certainly attractive in their own right but you just can’t beat the reds and purples in my opinion.
Here’s my “root around cypress knees” water-elm. It’s in need of a trim, but I wanted to show it before pulling out the shears since I knew I’d knock off a lot of the leaves in the process. This is typical water-elm fall color. I sometimes get it, but most of the time don’t.
And after a quick shearing. These remaining leaves may hang on for a few days; but for now, they look really nice.
by Zach Smith | Nov 28, 2015 | Care, Elms, Water Elm
I wrote before on my new experience of collecting water-elms, Planera aquatica, in October. A number of the specimens I brought home have shown new bud activity, though late in the season of course. There won’t be shoots from these buds, but their appearance tells me the trees have maintained their cells’ internal pressure going into dormancy. For those of you with some experience collecting trees, you know what sap withdrawal looks like. Smaller branchlets become brittle (in many cases you can actually see the juvenile bark wrinkle from dehydration). Once this process begins, you can pretty much count the tree as dead. On the other hand, those trees that are going to make it maintain their cells’ internal pressure, or hydration, and sap flow is re-established with the growth of new roots and then shoots (sometimes this is reversed, but sap flow is what pushes the new roots and shoots).
You may remember this tree from October 18th. It was the biggest one I brought home. As I noted at the time, I always do my best to bring home one big hunky masculine specimen from each trip. This one fit the bill.
Fast-forward to now, and this specimen has roots emerging from the drain holes of its pot. It’s also pushed a few new buds, which won’t grow any further this year. But the fact that there are roots tells me the trees’ cells are well hydrated. Barring something unusual happening this winter, this tree should explode with growth come spring.
Here’s the tree today. It’ll go on sale next spring. The trunk is 5″ at the soil surface (flaring roots are buried, as usual), and it’s 31.5″ to the chop.
by Zach Smith | Oct 25, 2015 | Care, Elms, Water Elm, Watering
You first saw this water-elm on August 16th. Dimensionally, it’s the biggest I’ve ever collected, sporting a trunk base 6″ across and measuring 42″ along the length of the trunk (but only 28″ in height from the soil surface). In terms of character, I’ve never collected anything better. It’s no exaggeration to say this is a very significant water-elm pre-bonsai – in size and style, certainly rare if not unique.
If you consider most examples of this species, the typical form for less than fully mature non-primary specimens is bush-like (water-elm does not get more than about 40 feet tall). Smaller trees tend to have two or more trunks. This form persists as they get larger, but you typically see one large trunk, one or two that are somewhat smaller, then one or more whip-sized trunks emerging from the root base. This makes collecting both exciting and challenging, as you don’t necessarily want everything to be multi-trunk. And it’s for this reason that I’m always excited to find a single-trunk example. Cathy found this one, and I was stoked. I have no idea what happened to it, but it was growing near a heavily traveled swamp road and most likely was run over by a truck untold years ago. Forced over, damaged, it nonetheless grew on.
I’ve mentioned in a previous blog post that my August collecting efforts were not as successful as I would have liked. It’s just one of those things that happens, tough to foresee. Despite this, about four weeks ago I noticed roots growing across one of the drainage holes of this tree’s nursery container. That was all I needed to know. I was sure this amazing water-elm specimen was going to make it.
I’ve pretty much ignored the tree over the past month. Along with everything else, it got watered three times a day as we’ve had mostly warm weather through mid- to late-October. But nothing more.
Today I was shocked to see a shoot pushing right near the chop on this tree. It was something I really didn’t expect, despite the fact that I knew this tree had made a lot of roots over the past couple of months. I figured it would simply wait until Spring 2016 to bud out.
So we’ll see how much growth we get before the inevitable cool-off happens, then it’s on to winter and the long wait till April when water-elms bud out. Assuming all goes well, I should be doing an initial wiring and shaping by early May. You’ll see updates as the tree progresses from collected trunk to bonsai.
And of course, it’s absolutely a requirement that this tree needs to have “Dragon” in its name. I’m not sure if it needs anything else, but that part is settled.
Let me know what you think of this tree.
by Zach Smith | Oct 18, 2015 | Care, Water Elm
Today concluded my water-elm roundup for 2015. You couldn’t have asked for better weather – temps in the 50s to start the day, rising into the 60s as the dig progressed. Better still, I brought home some real quality material. I’ll know for sure next spring if I succeeded, but in the meantime here’s a peek at some of the new specimens:
Here’s a group of trees waiting their turn to be processed.
A nice masculine specimen. Look at the radiating roots!
A beautiful twin-trunk. This one should be spectacular in a few years.
Here’s proof that you can pack a lot of tree in a small specimen. The trunk base on this one is about 1.5″.
I always like to bring home at least one really big hunky specimen each year, and this one was number two for 2015. The trunk base is 4″ and the height (after a final chop) about 32″. This tree will make quite a statement in a few short years.
by Zach Smith | Oct 4, 2015 | Care, Chinese Elm, Elms, Sweetgum, Water Elm
Here are a few trees that will be posted for sale in 2016 (among many others).
I just love Chinese elm forests. This one is composed of five trees, with the largest having a basal trunk thickness of 1″. The planting is 19″ in height. Paul Katich crafted the beautiful tray.
This forest will continue filling in next year, and the trunks should take on that nice whitish appearance that makes them look old.
Where this one began this past February.
I’ve been working on this little sweetgum for a few years now. It’s been entirely container-grown. Trunk is just over 1″ in diameter, height 14″.
Here’s the same tree last year. How’s that for rapid development?
This water-elm clump measures 8″ across the root base from the front view, 4″ from the side. Height is 17″. Next spring it needs to go into a smaller pot.
To see the history of this water-elm clump, click here.
by Zach Smith | Sep 12, 2015 | Care, Elms, Potting, Pruning, Water Elm, Watering, Wiring
I’ve mentioned before that one of the fall chores we can do that has a key effect on how quickly our bonsai develop is fall pruning and wiring. While we can’t expect much growth on our trees at this time of year, we can make and implement vital design decisions. Now, there are certain chores I don’t recommend in the fall. An example is trunk-chopping. The reason I don’t recommend this is the tree responds according to its “programming,” meaning it wants to replace the trunk and foliage mass you’ve removed. New vegetative shoots will do their best to form and grow out. This is certainly well and good, but all too often you run headlong into your first cold snap which means the new shoots don’t have time to harden off. If they subsequently get killed off by cold weather, your tree can easily suffer dieback.
I collected this water-elm, Planera aquatica, in August of 2014. It sprouted just a few weak shoots near the base a few weeks after collection, but that was it. I figured the tree wasn’t going the make it, but I also realized that the collecting season had been delayed last year just as this year’s was. There wasn’t really any reason to assume the tree had dried out, since I take great pains to seal up my trunk chops. So I left the tree alone, and sure enough it came out strong this past spring. I ultimately decided to keep this tree, considering how many I had lost in Winter 2014.
This first photo is from May of this year.
A month later I decided to do the initial wiring and pot the tree into my vintage Richard Robertson oblong lavender pot. I felt the elongated pot matched up perfectly with the tall, graceful trunk. The tree has a tremendous flaring base with great surface roots, which is about the best start for a bonsai you can expect.
I’ve been practicing one of my key training techniques, benign neglect, on this tree for the past three months. Aside from unwiring branches to keep the wire from biting in, I’ve only fed, watered and kept a casual eye on the tree. It’s done the rest. What a wild result, eh? But this is just what the bonsai artist needs in their trees that are under primary development.
I’m posting this close-up so you can see how quickly the new leader has thickened this year. From trunk bud to 1/2-inch diameter in a single growing season. The secret? Wire a little movement into it and let it grow!
And here’s the tree after wiring and pruning. I took off a good bit of the leader, but refrained from cutting back too far since I won’t get much more growth this year and the shoot is still very young. I’ll cut it back harder in spring and wire up a new leader in order to ensure the tapering is done right.
And that’s a year in the life of a (new) water-elm bonsai. This tree will be showable in two more years.
