Trees for Today and Tomorrow

Picked up a new project yesterday... A Premna.
This little guy only cost $75 dollars. Had a cool design that I thought I could make something nice out of it.
I could of just gone a more simple route with the style I am choosing for it and would of had an almost finished tree from the get go...
But, instead chose to grow out some lower branching to make a much more complex design with time. Cut back hard all branching above,
to start pushing some ramification, premnas do this really easily and fast. Also, cutting back up top, helps push lower branches to thicken then up.
If I let these grow by the end of next year, they should be about the same size as the main trunks...Still need some fine wiring done.
Style I am going for is like Min Lo's tree in the last photo.
First pic is tree before. Second work I have done so far.

Does this one live up to one of its common monikers?

Geo said:

Does this one live up to one of its common monikers?

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Not sure what you mean by monikers?

This is the same variety you see folks like Robert Stevenson working on... they grow extremely fast, have hard deadwood, often a lot of it and put out leaves the size of less than a quarter inch.

They really are awesome trees! If one slows the growth of them down, and allows for very small spacing between nodes, they will ramification very easy and put out tons of branching.

Also, forgot to add dimensions of the tree's size, sorry... the tree is only 11 inches tall by 16 inches wide... so a cool little compacted tree and off to a great start!
Plan on the finished image not being to much taller than it is now.

Think he's referring to the nickname "musk maple", because the leaves supposedly have a strong odor when cut/crushed.

coh said:

Think he's referring to the nickname "musk maple", because the leaves supposedly have a strong odor when cut/crushed.

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I have never heard them being referred to them as that... but yes, they do have and odor. With all the animals I have around my house from alley cats, to koi, to turtles... I don't seem to really notice or be put off by it! Having to change really stinky water, from food my turtle does not eat, in the form of fish and shrimp, I do notice! Lol!
This is what happens when nephews and neighbors don't want to take care of pets any more, they all end up at my house!

I had to mention it because it is so very rude. Never heard of a species referred to anything near as bad as "Stinky Bitch".

sawgrass said:

Not sure what you mean by monikers?

This is the same variety you see folks like Robert Stevenson working on... they grow extremely fast, have hard deadwood, often a lot of it and put out leaves the size of less than a quarter inch.

They really are awesome trees! If one slows the growth of them down, and allows for very small spacing between nodes, they will ramification very easy and put out tons of branching.

Click to expand...

I think you mean Robert Steven. I have both of his books and he has some fantastic Premna examples in them. Aren't they Premna microphylla though?

There are many species of Premna, it would seem.

Vin said:

I think you mean Robert Steven. I have both of his books and he has some fantastic Premna examples in them. Aren't they Premna microphylla though?

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I do... my phone and it's autocorrect... Don't know how many times I type something and later realized, it changed to something completely different?

This is a Premna Microphylla. So, is my other one in Post#36 and #70 of this same thread.
Min Lo's tree is not however, just saw my tree styled in a similar way.

sawgrass said:

I do... my phone and it's autocorrect... Don't know how many times I type something and later realized, it changed to something completely different?

This is a Premna Microphylla. So, is my other one in Post#36 and #70 of this same thread.
Min Lo's tree is not however, just saw my tree styled in a similar way.

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So the leaves will reduce quite a bit then? If that is the case then so should the leaves on my Musk Maple? It's just a pimple in a pot at the moment but it's good information to know.

Vin said:

So the leaves will reduce quite a bit then? If that is the case then so should the leaves on my Musk Maple? It's just a pimple in a pot at the moment but it's good information to know.

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Yes, the leaves will reduce down even further.
This tree is only 11 inches tall as it currently sits, which is quite small for the amount of tree going on.
My other one in the previous posts I mentioned, is I believe of the top of my head, less than 7?

Thought I posted this Lantana up... but I guess not? Anyways was taking an updated photo and thought I would share...
First picture is from tonight. Second is from just over a month ago when I did a trunk chop and first style to begin to set the tree up. Last picture is what the material looked like before the chop

Update to Post #41

Thought I would share an update to this little Tea... a little over a couple of months ago, decided to do some adjustments to this tree to tighten up the image...
So, first picture is the tree filling, and is from tonight. Second picture was after the initial adjustments. Need to find a really nice little pot for it... tree was originally planted in this one due to it being the only one I had at the time.

Was working on wiring this Ficus tonight. This summer, I decided to take the tree in another direction. It is obviously an import tree. and wanted to try and give the material a style that did not have an import feel. So I removed the whole top of the tree, back to the first branch, due to the fact that I really liked the line that it gave the tree, as well as the movement... I cut back hard to try and push new growth down the trunk and it is starting to fill in, so I wanted to start getting some wire on the tree, mainly to help open it up, so that it will promote even more growth.

Today's project was a Juniper that I was taking from nursery material, to a First Style... A progression of it's construction can be found here; http://bonsainut.com/index.php?threads/building-a-tree.21126/

First image is the finished tree after it's first style, second where the tree began.

Was taking photos of some trees tonight to track their progress, and thought I would share one of a Shohin Juniper, that is beginning to progress rather nicely!
This tree is 9 inches tall. Currently looking for a nice smaller pot for it.

sawgrass said:

Was taking photos of some trees tonight to track their progress, and thought I would share one of a Shohin Juniper, that is beginning to progress rather nicely!
This tree is 9 inches tall. Currently looking for a nice smaller pot for it.

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I think this one could very well be my favorite tree of the bunch. The tree
before this one that you also have on another thread was quite a transformation
as well. However, in your final image there appears to be several wired branches
that are very straight - something I'm not used to seeing in your work. Could be
just the way it appears in the image or maybe you didn't want to overwork a tree
that you already gave a pretty good workout. Still very impressive though. Keep
them coming!

Vin said:

I think this one could very well be my favorite tree of the bunch. The tree
before this one that you also have on another thread was quite a transformation
as well. However, in your final image there appears to be several wired branches
that are very straight - something I'm not used to seeing in your work. Could be
just the way it appears in the image or maybe you didn't want to overwork a tree
that you already gave a pretty good workout. Still very impressive though. Keep
them coming!

Click to expand...

Thanks for the reply!
The main difference between this second tree and the one before, where the thread was written about the process, is just them being at different stages of development. Obviously their style is different as well, but the second tree has had quite a few years of work, reducing and eliminating, as well as some reworking of some of the branches to get it to this stage.

With this said, the initial style that was done with the material when i first began, has changed very little. Just improved upon. This goes back to the "instant bonsai " discussion we had some time back.

The initial style one does to a beginning piece of material needs to be as complete of an image as one can get... it then takes years of development, tightening and refining to bring this initial style to fruition. The health needs to be taken into account as well as one needs to be careful not to set it back to much by eliminating to much, and something that might be used in the eventual design. Branches not needed can always be removed as one narrows in the finial image.

This spring the second tree had half of the tree removed, actually... as other areas grew, I now realized I could remove one if the main branches and it could be replaced with this new growth.

Stacy, is there a specific time of year that it's better to do these big bends on junipers? I have a couple I need/want to wrestle with, but I'm not sure if I should do it now, wait 'till the trees are completely dormant, or wait further until spring when they're growing.