Bonsai Odds & Ends – Hawthorn, Water-Elm, Trumpet Vine

by | Jun 15, 2019 | Care, Elms, Hawthorn, Styling, Vines, Water Elm, Wiring

Today I did a one on one workshop with a new bonsai enthusiast. One of the specimens we were worked on was a three-tree Parsley hawthorn composition, very similar to this one. I love bonsai forests. The three-tree planting is the smallest expression of this style of bonsai. While this may seem like a real challenge, you can evoke a great deal of emotion in a very small space with just a few items. In this group there’s dramatic tension, complementary movement, depth, and perspective. It doesn’t get much better than that.
(This specimen is available at our Hawthorn Bonsai page.)

Here’s a Water-elm that we collected last August. It had a great trunk, with an unusual secondary trunk in a strategic spot. I saw a great upright bonsai in the making.
What did I tell you! We also studied potting bonsai today, and this tree was definitely ready for its initial styling and first bonsai pot. It turned out even better than I thought it would.
I was clearing an overgrown area near my garden and ran across a few nice Trumpet vines. This one has a trunk base of 1.5″, some nice shari and wonderful movement.
Plenty of new growth, just as you’d expect from a vine,
Well, most of that had to go. I see a semi-cascade specimen in this one, so a little wire and some man-handling and it’s going the way I want it to. I’ll leave it alone for a good while now; it’ll probably grow six or eight feet of new vine before it annoys me enough for another pruning.

Bonsai Odds & Ends – BC, Sweetgum, Water-Elm

by | Jun 9, 2019 | Bald Cypress, Care, Collecting, Elms, Potting, Sweetgum, Water Elm

Here’s a nice, slender Bald cypress from this year’s crop. I had planned from the start to hold the tree and make it into a flat-top style. It’s grown out enough now that I can do the initial styling on it.

About 20 minutes later, this is what I ended up with. It’s a good start. I’m going to get a lot of vigor in those two leaders, so I can’t afford to ignore it for long. When you’re making a flat-top, the thickening leader(s) can get away from you very quickly.

The flat-top style for BC is the fastest to make. The reason for this is, you’re playing to the tree’s natural habit of extremely vigorous apical growth. So you basically cut away just about everything but one or two leaders. The tree wants to get very tall very fast, so it pumps everything it has into those leaders. Which is another way of saying, in about three weeks I’ll be unwiring and rewiring the leaders, and wiring the secondary branches that will have grown.

We’re still in Sweetgum collecting season. Yesterday I lifted this nice specimen. It’s got a lot of character considering it’s not all that old, maybe 10 years. The trunk base is 2.5″, and it’s been chopped a few times along the way by the unwitting road crew.

This Bonsai South Collection Water-elm got its first bonsai pot yesterday, a very fine Lary Howard piece. The tree grew naturally this way, all I had to do was cut away everthing that didn’t look like a bonsai. It should continue to develop quickly this year.

And finally, another Bonsai South Collection Water-elm.

You come across trees in the course of your bonsai avocation that just have that special something. For me, this is one of those. Just a great natural specimen. The branching is of course under construction, but should develop rapidly.

What really made this bonsai for me was when this exquisite Lary Howard pot came available. Every great bonsai needs a great pot. It would be hard to beat this composition.

Let me know what you think of all these trees.

Water-Elm #46

by | May 25, 2019 | Care, Elms, Potting, Pruning, Styling, Water Elm, Wiring

When we found this Water-elm last August (2018), I knew it was going in my collection. I had lost a similar specimen back in 2014. There’s something about those two trunks!

Today (5/25/19) it was time to style and pot this tree. Most of the bonsai is there; I just had to “find” it.

That nice branch on the right-hand trunk came with the tree. I want to keep it, but it has to be brought down some and then chased back to get the foliage closer to the trunk.

Here I’ve trimmed the foliage back a good bit. The branch is still over long, but I’m hoping to get back-budding on it so I can cut it back even further. I’ll know in a couple of weeks.

Moving over to the left-hand trunk, I wired a low branch and positioned it. Then I removed some small branches on the inside of both trunks. In a twin-trunk bonsai, branches should not be left growing on the inside of the trunks. This is not horticulturally sound, and usually doesn’t make the tree look any better either.

More clearing out of unusable branches on the insides of the trunks.

While I have a complete crown on the right-hand trunk, I don’t on the left-hand trunk. So I’ll have to make one. I have two nice leaders at the top of the trunk, so here they’ve been wired and positioned.

The right-hand crown was way too bushy, so I removed a lot of the foliage and did some strategic pruning to open up the structure.

The final step was potting the tree. I think this gorgeous Lary Howard oval really goes well with it.

The tree is a little right-hand heavy in the apex, but allowing the left-hand crown to fill out is going to shift this to a more balanced condition. It will also help to chase back that low right-hand branch some more.

I’m very excited about this Water-elm. By next year, it should be just about show-ready.

Let me know what you think.

Potting Up A Water-Elm

by | May 5, 2019 | Care, Elms, Potting, Water Elm

We collected this nice smaller Water-elm in August of 2018. By October the shoots were strong enough for an initial wiring. Doesn’t look like much, does it? But the trunk base is 2″ at the soil, and with the trunk chop at 11″ I should be able to make a nice 16-18″ tall broom-form bonsai out of it. From humble beginnings ….

Fast-forward to today (5/5/19). This tree has grown with very good strength, and that tells me I have a solid root system to work with. This is the basis for all of your bonsai. Without a strong, healthy root system you can’t do a whole lot with any tree, no matter how nice the trunk and branches may be. So always be sure to devote the right amount of time and attention to this vital part of your tree that you only see once every few years.

My first order of business today is to be sure I have the correct front selected. Here’s one view.

Another view.

And another.

Another.

And back to the start. I don’t know about you, but I found with this tree that no matter how I turned it I could see a nice bonsai. Most trees are not amenable to the so-called “360 bonsai” approach, meaning they look good from every angle. It’s why bonsai have a front, sides and a back. But occasionally you’ll run across a specimen that looks good no matter how you turn it. A nice fringe benefit.

This tree had a couple of spots where the bark was unattached. The one on the bottom was my doing – sometimes things happen when you’re potting up a tree. Most elms have bark that easily detaches from the tree, so you always have to be cognizant of this fact when collecting and potting them. And even though you know what to expect, sometimes you get surprised!

I went ahead and removed the detached bark and scraped away a thin layer of wood underneath. Both areas will be treated with lime sulfur once they’re thoroughly dry. The one at the base will also need to be sturdied up with PC Petrifier.

The final step for today, potting and trimming. I left the leader alone, so that it will continue to run and thicken up. This will make the tapering transition look right. I expect that by fall I should be ready to prune the leader back.

Let me know what you think.

A Very Big Water-Elm Gets Styled

by | Apr 19, 2019 | Care, Elms, Pruning, Styling, Water Elm, Wiring

This is one big Water-elm! We collected it in July of 2018, and it recovered nicely last summer and fall. The base on this tree is 4″ in diameter above the root crown, and it’s chopped at 29″. When all is said and done, I’ll have a real “statement” Water-elm bonsai of about 40″ height. But that’s a couple of years away. For now, let’s see what I can make of this starting material.

It’s vital that you spend time studying your future bonsai subjects before you get started on your designs. Often you’ll have more than one potential front, and more than one sensible branch set you can create. If you can’t decide, give yourself more time. But sooner or later, you’ll have to go ahead and take the plunge.

As a general rule we begin the design process in the lower part of the tree. In this case I focused more on the top to begin with. There are a couple of reasons for this. One, most of the regrowth on this Water-elm is concentrated in the top third of the tree. Two, if you look at the bottom two-thirds of the tree in the above photo, you’ll notice that there’s little confusion about how that work is going to go.

It’s all about making decisions in each part of the tree, while keeping in mind the overall design plan. My thought process is noted in the captions.

Now I drop to the lower part of the tree, to tackle an obvious issue and get it out of the way.

Now I’m on to what is probably the critical part of this future bonsai. I don’t have a lot to choose from in terms of branching in the lower part of the tree – but, I have what I need. There are three strategically placed shoots that I’ll be using in my initial design.

Voila! Now I’ve anchored my design with my first branch-second branch-third branch setup. For every informal upright bonsai you make, you’re going to have these three indispensable branches in one configuration or another.

Now I move up the tree, back to where I began the examination and decision making process.

When you’re working with collected trees, you’re going to be doing carving at some point. Not only is this essential to the design, it’s actually quite rewarding. Trees in the wild respond to natural events that cost them limbs by producing callus tissue to heal wounds. We reproduce this healing process when we work on our bonsai by way of carving and caring for places where branches are removed (or trunks are chopped in order to create or enhance taper).

Here’s another example of a challenge you’ll be confronted with sooner or later. I have a little gaggle of tender shoots that may or may not end up as part of my design. I don’t need to do anything with them right now. There’s going to be time for that down the road.

I’m closing in on the final design elements. What’s always true with just about every tree you work on is, with (typically) more branches spaced closer together near the apex of your tree, deciding what goes and what stays and making all that into a nice design is your biggest challenge.

Another view of the tree, and another couple of observations about this particular specimen. You can see what is going to need carving next year, and how I was able to select and wire out two more branches to fit the design that’s taking shape.

Not much to go. Here you can see another phenomenon that you’ll face many times, namely, branches that arise very near to the new leader you’ve selected. The problem with leaving these and trying to make use of them is that with the leader emerging as it does from the trunk, a branch you make here can end up emerging from inside a curve. These are almost always a no-no, as they’re not horticulturally sound and rarely survive in nature.

With the smaller shoots gone, now I can see this branch better and I’m confident it will play a part in the design.

The last step was to wire the remainder of the branches and the leader, and position them.

Now you can see the complete initial design. There are three energy issues I need to manage as this specimen resumes growth: letting the lower three branches run to thicken; letting the leader run to thicken; and keeping the branches in the upper part of the tree pinched and pruned back so they don’t dominate the lower branches.

I’d love to hear what you think of this work. Leave me a comment below.

A Water-Elm Gets Styled

by | Apr 13, 2019 | Care, Elms, Pruning, Styling, Water Elm

I love designing bonsai, and I especially love working with species that grow quickly and can be brought to a high degree of development in just a year or two.

This Water-elm, Planera aquatica, came home in August of 2018. It recovered quickly, and this spring it has really exploded with growth. Today I decided to go ahead and do the initial styling on the tree. What I know from decades of experience with the species is, by this coming fall the entire branch structure will be well-developed and well-ramified. It’s just the nature of Water-elms.

I started at the bottom, which is almost always best. The lowest right-hand branch is just a very slight shoot at present, emerging from what was originally a pretty long upright branch. I had thought of keeping it, but as I studied the tree more I felt it just isn’t going to add enough to the design to leave as-is. So once that slight shoot gets some strength, I’ll cut back the rest.

I also had a nice branch in back that I was able to wire and position to give some good depth to the tree. This is something you always want in the lower part of your informal upright specimens. It gives stability to the tree.

Working my way up the tree, more branches get wired and positioned. You want some space between your branches, of course, and this space should diminish as you move higher in the tree.

Time to chop that trunk! I made an angled cut, which will help produce a continuously tapering trunk once the leader has thickened sufficiently.

And finally, I selected a wired a few of the branches in the apex. I’ll allow the leader to continue running, in order to thicken the base. By summer or early fall I should be able to cut the leader back most of the way. By that time, the transition should appear very smooth.

I’m planning to slip-pot this tree sometime around June, unless it sells as-is first. I’ve posted it to our Water-elm Bonsai page.