This white birch won best deciduous in the 2016 nationals, and is owned and developed by Dennis Vojtilla, a member of the Bonsai Society of Portland. He talks a little bit about it’s development on a Mirai podcast, and he explained that birch, along with some other species prone to dieback and losing branches, can be developed well by letting new growth extend only to four or five leaves, and then cutting back to one. As I understand his explanation, letting the branches run long causes these trees to abandon growth closer to the trunk, so even though development takes much longer this way, he does not experience much dieback and random branch loss. He has fantastic deciduous trees in his collection, and some species not often used for bonsai, such as grape. It’s a podcast that is certainly worth a listen, and he gives some interesting bits of info from his years of developing beautiful deciduous trees.
