are "great maples" chopped ? - come share your thoughts

[bonsaichile]

Congratulations! You have found me (the one person who will argue that the technical mastery of Jacques-Louis David is not superior to that of Jackson Pollock). People have a tendency to overestimate the difficulty of painting depictions of scenes of recognizable real-world subject matter and drastically underestimate the difficulty of painting a balanced, harmonious, aesthetically pleasing, and emotionally/intellectually relevant work of abstract expressionism. The reason for the bias is simple: virtually everyone has tried drawing or painting scenes of real-world subject matter, at home or in school. Typically they were given little technical instruction, the results were mediocre (or worse), they experienced the judgments of their peers (probably some of which were unkind), they didn’t stick with it, and they were left with the lasting impression that drawing/painting in a realistic style is really hard. Probably the vast majority of those same people have never even attempted to make abstract art. They look at it and think that it must be easier because it doesn’t have to satisfy the constraint of being a recognizable and true likeness of real-world people/things. What they don’t realize is that the lack of that constraint is actually a source of great difficulty. The fact that you could, in theory, lay down paint in any configuration whatsoever is deceptive. It obscures the reality that some sort of structure is required to compose visual features on the picture plane in a way that is aesthetically appealing to people and stimulates associative memory to provoke thoughts and feelings. That’s hard to do and requires considerable technical mastery. The technical mastery involved is not inferior to that required to make realistic renderings in paint. It is simply different.

Excellently put! My feelings exactly!

 

[Deleted member 21616]

some excellent points @Lorax7. I'm glad that we've each expressed our views, and I think our exchange has already achieved what it should here in a bonsai forum

By the very nature of putting them in the ground you will greatly accelerate their ability to thicken. Bigger chops are inevitable which equates to higher risk & severity of dieback. Internodal length increases so you may have to graft. Watch out for what I call 'necking' too. What is necking? I have seen it happen post chop where you cut and really let a shoot fly, thinking great, I'm really gonna let this next trunk section thicken fast but it is devoid of side branches so you have jack shit to cut back to. In most deciduous you'd probably get a dormant bud to pop but it's a crap shoot with mountain maple.

Keep it in a generous sized pot. Yes, it will take longer. Yes it won't be as thick or have as good taper as it's chopped equivalent for the years invested.

However, it will have a better nebari; you can view it at eye level so you can plan and execute cuts more efficiently; you can select & build branches with greater ease. Cuts will be less severe so you won't have massive wounds to heal. Pot grown trees are (generally) less prone to some of the more serious Acer diseases. You can also identify problems faster if you walk past it every day rather than it being at the back of a grow bed. The last two maples still in my beds will be dug up next Spring and potted.

Thank you @Paulpash all really interesting stuff that had not yet crossed my mind, and that i have not yet had to face myself. I appreciate the practical considerations

 

[RobertB]

Does anyone know if or where Mr Valavanis talks about how he grew out his maples?

 

[Dav4]

Does anyone know if or where Mr Valavanis talks about how he grew out his maples?

He talks about it at length in his book, describing in words and with pictures the development of many of his personal trees over several decades https://www.amazon.com/Classical-Bonsai-Half-Century-Study/dp/0988404214. It's a good read.

 

[erb.75]

How the Chinese do it. Must be the reason why they don’t have any great deciduous penjing.


View attachment 218766

they don't have any great deciduous Penjing? man, you must be living under a rock...lol

 

[Cosmos]

they don't have any great deciduous Penjing? man, you must be living under a rock...lol

I was being sarcastic, of course. Demonstration by the absurd, etc.

Deciduous penjing generally speak to me way more than Japanese deciduous bonsai do.

 

[erb.75]

I need to take this forum much less seriously, lol.

 

[Deleted member 21616]

attached is a photo of a maple by michael hagedorn, taken from here:

https://crataegus.com/portfolio/portfolio/

I drew in brown what i think was used to form the first segment of the trunk

I drew in green the bud that was chosen to grown the second segment of the trunk

is the following the most likely scenario?:

the first segment of the trunk was grown long (in the direction of the brown arrow), but as soon as the second segment (green arrow) had gone from bud to branch, the first segment (brown) was cut back (possibly when that first brown segment was no more than pencil thick?)

if so, i'm guessing this process would just repeat itself until you reached full desired height?

Question: if this is the process, you could presumably reach desired height in 2-3 seasons. would you delay this to thicken lower segments before building upper segments?

 

[Leo in N E Illinois]

Japanese Bonsai vs Chinese Penjing

If you were to survey the Kofuku-ten show catalogs, in sequence from the first in the 1920's to the current, you would see a distinct and fairly linear refinement in style. You would also see some sequence of what styles are ''in fashion''. But you would see a distinct refinement of the trees. There would also be quite a number of trees that appear in multiple issues. a few appeared in the 1920's and 1930's, many more after World War 2 made repeat appearances. So the Kofuku-ten catalogs would show progression of some individual trees. World War 2 was a major disruption in the development of Japanese Bonsai. But after WW II, there are no breaks in Japanese Bonsai.

Chinese Penjing
Like the Japanese, in China, WW 2 was a major disruption to the development of Penjing. Then another major disruption came with the Cultural Revolution, I believe from 1966 thru 1976. During this time many Penjing collections were destroyed and the Penjing artists were sent off to re-education camps. If they survived, they were not able to safely resume Penjing until Chinese society had settled down and opened up some. This is a major disruption to the development of Penjing. Today there are very few Penjing trees that were saved from prior to 1976. There are a few, but the count is very small. Part of the coarse appearance of Penjing is that their oldest specimens are not that old. Most of the best have only been in training 30 or 40 years. Where in Japan there are a fair number of bonsai that have been in training for more than 75 years.

This is a significant reason for some of the apparent differences in development of Penjing vs Bonsai.

 

[Bananaman]

Does anyone know if or where Mr Valavanis talks about how he grew out his maples?

I believe this is a Bill tree with the scars still on it over more than a few years.

 

[Maloghurst]

What is the line where a “cutback” becomes a chop? I think they are one and the same. All of them are chopped or cutback.
The skill comes in where the grower can heal the scar and create convincing transition based on how the chop is handled.
I’ve read Jonas post on ebiharas maples and ebihara definitely chops his maples and claims to heal a huge scar completely over in 4 years.
If you don’t have the knowledge and experience on how to do this perfectly then it will be obvious.
When it’s done right you won’t be able to tell.
So as other have stated it doesn’t matter how you get there.

 

[Dorky_gearhead]

I'm still wet around the ears but I intend to make every trunk chop an obvious hurdle in the trees life.

Edit: I like my bonsai short, fat, and ugly. After a few beers, it kinda looks okay.

 

[M. Frary]

Edit: I like my bonsai short, fat, and ugly. After a few beers, it kinda looks okay

Dude!
Like a 2 o'clocker girl at the bar.

 

[Dorky_gearhead]

Lol!