Formal upright Larch

Bnana

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I do like formal upright larches and I can easily collect young trees. But I'm not sure what the best approach is.
The young plants in the forest have very little taper. Should I collect a young one (1 cm trunk diameter) chop it and let the branches grow for years to develop a tapered trunk?
Or can I use a bigger one that already has a trunk that is something like 3 cm and chop that at the desired height with a new leader and trim the higher branches.
The core is whether letting the branches on the trunk grow will create taper over time. As most larger branches will be low on the trunk that might work but would like to hear from someone with more experience with this species.
 

leatherback

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Multiple chops can work. But you can only chop back to living buds, is one important thing to keep in mind.

Then you wire a small branch up, and let that become your new main trunk.
Make sure you keep all the cuts in one line on the back of the tree.
 

just.wing.it

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Multiple chops can work. But you can only chop back to living buds, is one important thing to keep in mind.

Then you wire a small branch up, and let that become your new main trunk.
Make sure you keep all the cuts in one line on the back of the tree.
Do you think that utilizing the Ebihara method may also assist the tree at creating taper at the base?
Maybe chop and ground grow with Ebihara method....
 

leatherback

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Maybe chop and ground grow with Ebihara method....
I do not know.
In general, all trees that I grow out, get their roots worked and all verticals are removed. I still have to see how much benefit one gets from the ebihara method :eek: . Ill try it with a trident this year and see whether it feels like I get additional spread. I have not seen many people replicating what the Japanese expert does.I *think* there is more to the method than just putting on a board and fixing roots in position.
 

Bnana

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I will definitely select a tree that has many low branches that can function as sacrificial branches to thicken the trunk. Chop it and create a nice new leader and let that grow for some time. I can keep the scars on the back but that will still give a bend in the trunk on that spot, is there a way to solve that or does that go away on its own?
The plan is to plant it in the ground with the roots pruned and on a tile. I'm not sure whether the Ebihara method is possible as the trees will not be that thick to begin with.
 

Forsoothe!

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There are two basic ways to obtain taper and both involve just growing it, by one method or the the other, or more commonly a combination of the two. Each branch contributes to growth of the trunk from its position on the tree and below. Larches and many or most or all forest trees grow without any lower branches because of where they grow in forests where there is only light from above because neighbors are too close. When grown out in the open they all grow with lots of lower branches and have taper. We all know this blah blah blah. You have to decide what height you want and begin with about that height and apply what we know which is reflected in the cartoons below, all of which includes hard pruning of the upper branches and letting the lower branches run out except keeping all foliage growth close enough to the trunk for ultimate purposes...
T1.JPG
t2.JPG

T3.JPG
You decide how many scars and how big of scars, you will tolerate, then choose which method will dominate in your combination of growth. This is separate from any work on the nebari.
t4.JPG
The problem with starting too tall is that it makes it more difficult to get lower branches in the right places to then begin the tapered-growth process. Can it be done? I suppose so at the expense of maybe having scars where you don't want them. There are benefits and prices to be paid for every process. You choose and accept what you get.
 
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Bnana

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Those are nice illustrations.
I think I will primarily go for the first method. There are quite a few trees (a couple of years old) in an open area that have a lot of branches, the lower branches can become sacrificial branches and give a nice taper. It doesn't matter if they become long and loose their needles close to the trunk as they will be removed anyway. I wasn't sure how well this works for larch but apparently that is a good technique for these species.
For the top I will chop and choose a new leader. I'll see where we go from there, I can always repeat that later.

The nebari will strengthen the taper visually but that is of course a separated technique.
 

Adair M

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Formal Upright is one of THE most difficult styles to do well. Oh, I know, it appears simple: straight, round, scar free trunk, mostly symmetrical branches, even radial nebari, gentle taper... easy, huh? NOT!!!

Good FU’s require one thing that is the MOST difficult for us to apply: TIME! And lots of it. Decades, of time, unfortunately.

All those “cookie cutter” Japanese FUs are old, old, old. And they were grown by using @Forsoothe!’s first method: slow growth, not by the repeated chops. The problem with the chop method is every time a “chop” is made, and the new leader is wired up, it induces a bit of movement into the trunk. Assuming the chosen new leader is on the front, and the chop scar is on the back, over time, and repeated chops, the tree will develop a forward lean, which is not desired in a true formal upright. (FU is an exception to the “forward lean rule”).

I’m not trying to discourage you from trying to create some, I’m setting expectations: plan for a long journey. Attempted shortcuts will lower the quality of the final product.

However, if you obtain several starters, it might be a fun project to try different development techniques, and see how they look 10 to 20 years later! Be sure to label each one with the methodology it is supposed to get, or else you might get everything scrambled up.

Meanwhile, I have an example to share. This tree is not a FU, but it does show how gentle taper can be achieved over time without using sacrifice branches to thicken the trunk:

D2A1C249-0E3B-454B-82DA-4AFC06D39B8B.jpeg

Here is an example of an old, old, JBP Formal Upright:

5C5B6FCF-1F94-4B6B-B2B2-5411CC5384FC.jpeg

The white background allows a good view of the trunk and taper. I estimate this tree is about 80 years old. It does have a scar on the back where a low branch was removed. It will take decades to callous over.
 

Bnana

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Sure the great formal uprights are hard to make, that's not what I expect. An advantage of larch is that they grow fast and even with a trunk that is relatively thin already look good, as long as they have taper. These trees can be very elegant, that's what I'm aiming for.
I'm not very strict about small scars on the trunk, I'm not Japanese and large larch in the forest also have scars from old branches on the trunk. The scars should be in the right proportion though.
 

Adair M

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Sure the great formal uprights are hard to make, that's not what I expect. An advantage of larch is that they grow fast and even with a trunk that is relatively thin already look good, as long as they have taper. These trees can be very elegant, that's what I'm aiming for.
I'm not very strict about small scars on the trunk, I'm not Japanese and large larch in the forest also have scars from old branches on the trunk. The scars should be in the right proportion though.
True, I have seen some nice FUs with lots of “snag” Jin’s.

Good luck with your projects!
 

Adair M

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There are two basic ways to obtain taper and both involve just growing it, by one method or the the other, or more commonly a combination of the two. Each branch contributes to growth of the trunk from its position on the tree and below. Larches and many or most or all forest trees grow without any lower branches because of where they grow in forests where there is only light from above because neighbors are too close. When grown out in the open they all grow with lots of lower branches and have taper. We all know this blah blah blah. You have to decide what height you want and begin with about that height and apply what we know which is reflected in the cartoons below, all of which includes hard pruning of the upper branches and letting the lower branches run out except keeping all foliage growth close enough to the trunk for ultimate purposes...
View attachment 339253
View attachment 339254

View attachment 339252
You decide how many scars and how big of scars, you will tolerate, then choose which method will dominate in your combination of growth. This is separate from any work on the nebari.
View attachment 339256
The problem with starting too tall is that it makes it more difficult to get lower branches in the right places to then begin the tapered-growth process. Can it be done? I suppose so at the expense of maybe having scars where you don't want them. There are benefits and prices to be paid for every process. You choose and accept what you get.
I was checking my trees today, and was looking at the old scars on one of my Atlas Cedars. It has nice taper:

39A08AF6-0954-4E4A-84D7-B73682C44465.jpeg

The base is about 6 inches across. At first glance, it would appear similar to @Forsoothe! ’s first diagram. Where the older branches have contributed more girth to the lower trunk.

But upon closer inspection, we see there’s more to the story than that. Much more. You see, for every branch that’s on the tree now, there’s at least two major scars where there were large branches removed! Several, in fact, were larger than the branches that are on it now.

At one time, this tree had three times as many branches as it does now, and they were larger than the ones on it now.

I did not develop this tree, Jim Gremel did. Kudos to him! But we can learn a lot about how it was developed by inspecting the tree today.

From my conversations with him, I know he used to wire and shape the trees while they were still planted in the ground. He would let them grow out, a lot, and then come back and hard prune them. So, if this tree had three times the branches, and they were heavy and long, this thing must have been quite the bush!

But the take-away is it takes more branches than Forsoothe! suggests to create the taper he depicts in his drawing. Far more.
 

Bnana

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Thanks, that does clarify a lot. This is of course a tree with a very heavy trunk, for an element slender formal upright that might not be necessary but this is a nice technique.
 

Adair M

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Thanks, that does clarify a lot. This is of course a tree with a very heavy trunk, for an element slender formal upright that might not be necessary but this is a nice technique.
Yes, if the desired result is to keep a narrow trunk, keep fewer branches on it.

Here is a tree that is more like what Forsoothe! depicted:

5D58405C-2C34-40BE-B388-020EB20CB8A9.jpeg

This tree has never been in the ground. It was taken as an air layer off another tree, and the trunk was once a horizontal branch. It has only a few branches, rather widely spaced apart, just as in Forsoothe! ‘s drawing. As you can see, there is some taper, but not a lot. The bottom branches have a LOT of foliage. But there’s not a lot of trunk girth being formed, relative to the amount of foliage. So, foliage quantity is not the sole determinant of where the tree puts on wood. I believe it’s the “auxin highway”, from apex to roots.
 

Bnana

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That's a tree with a very different feel, although both are (more or less) formal upright.
 

Adair M

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That's a tree with a very different feel, although both are (more or less) formal upright.
The second tree is an “Informal Upright”. The apex is over the nebari, but there’s movement in the trunk.
 
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