Azalea whips in training

[Pitoon]

Many here should know by now that I'm a big azalea fan. As much as I like those thick trunk azaleas, the tall slender thin trunk ones always seem to grab my attention. So I've decided to try growing a couple out myself. I air layered these two long whips.

The one with more foliage is 'Dorothy Hayden' the other is an unknown kurume type with HIH red flowers that turns metallic looking as the flower ages. Hopefully these make it past this winter.

I'll be posting progress pics along the way.

 

[Eckhoffw]

Nice layers!
what do you pot them up in?

 

[Deep Sea Diver]

Great Job!

How are you thinking about handling those rosettes?

cheers
DSD sends

 

[Pitoon]

Nice layers!
what do you pot them up in?

Thanks! They are in a peat/vermiculite/sand mix.

 

[Pitoon]

Great Job!

How are you thinking about handling those rosettes?

cheers
DSD sends

Thanks! Plan is to slowly remove a shoot one by one until I have one left. Then wrap and wire both for movement. Remove the wire as soon as spring hits and hope for buds to pop in all the right places......If not I'll be grafting them in summer after I can get some cuttings to root.

 

[Deep Sea Diver]

This procedure...? I think that's what you are saying?

For the apex, choose one branch to wire upward to be the apex and wire the smallest down, or the one in best position, for a branch. Prune the rest flush, with a slight convexity w/CP.

For mid body rosettes, choose and wire the smallest, or the one in the best position, for a branch and prune all else slightly convex w/CP. (But the leader)

Next year you can push those side branches to backbud as needed.

btw normally wire is kept on azaleas for one rise in sap and one fall in sap to set.... or vice versa. The fall this year was in September for me.

Dorothy Hayden is a good back budder and seems cold hardy. Its 1/8 Korean poukhanense, 1/8 Kaemperi, 1/4 Kurume, 1/2 satsuki, (Louise Gable x Flame) x Getsutoku). The one you sent me is doing great. Flexible when thinner.

From what I can tell the trunks are right at the point to wire up sometime this winter. I'm guessing you already were planning this job!



best
DSD sends

 

[Glaucus]

Nice amount of roots on that layer. Did you wound the bark? And was the plant in the sun or the shade? I would always think that putting a pot around it while the plant is in the sun would result in too much of it drying out. Which is I guess why people often wrap an air layer in plastic.

For a long thing trunk azalea, the challenge is often to get nice gradual smooth movement in the trunk. Together with a gradual taper as well of course.
The danger is that you get these abrupt bends in the trunk where the node used to be. So you get straight segments of trunks for each growing season. And bends where the flower bud used to be and new shoots emerge. You can try to wire them now, but they will be in dormancy and they will be less easy to bend with less water inside the cells. They will get a bit less brittle when they start growing again in spring and the sap starts flowing. Or so the theory goes.

Also, it is nice to have multiple trunks.

When spring comes, I would prune off those branches at the whirls/nodes and try to wire and bend it. But I think you may have missed the window for bending these well.

Some of the nicest azaleas are thin multitrunked. I will take a look and find a good example in a Satsuki Kenkyu.

Another thing to consider is radial root spread.

 

[Pitoon]

This procedure...? I think that's what you are saying?

For the apex, choose one branch to wire upward to be the apex and wire the smallest down, or the one in best position, for a branch. Prune the rest flush, with a slight convexity w/CP.

For mid body rosettes, choose and wire the smallest, or the one in the best position, for a branch and prune all else slightly convex w/CP. (But the leader)

Next year you can push those side branches to backbud as needed.

btw normally wire is kept on azaleas for one rise in sap and one fall in sap to set.... or vice versa. The fall this year was in September for me.

Dorothy Hayden is a good back budder and seems cold hardy. Its 1/8 Korean poukhanense, 1/8 Kaemperi, 1/4 Kurume, 1/2 satsuki, (Louise Gable x Flame) x Getsutoku). The one you sent me is doing great. Flexible when thinner.

From what I can tell the trunks are right at the point to wire up sometime this winter. I'm guessing you already were planning this job!



best
DSD sends

Thanks for the advice. I'll be posting pics as they progress.

.......I also pollinated a 'Dorothy Hayden' with 'Chojuho' this should be an interesting project if I get what I'm trying to achieve hopefully in 8-10yrs from now.

 

[Pitoon]

Nice amount of roots on that layer. Did you wound the bark? And was the plant in the sun or the shade? I would always think that putting a pot around it while the plant is in the sun would result in too much of it drying out. Which is I guess why people often wrap an air layer in plastic.

For a long thing trunk azalea, the challenge is often to get nice gradual smooth movement in the trunk. Together with a gradual taper as well of course.
The danger is that you get these abrupt bends in the trunk where the node used to be. So you get straight segments of trunks for each growing season. And bends where the flower bud used to be and new shoots emerge. You can try to wire them now, but they will be in dormancy and they will be less easy to bend with less water inside the cells. They will get a bit less brittle when they start growing again in spring and the sap starts flowing. Or so the theory goes.

Also, it is nice to have multiple trunks.

When spring comes, I would prune off those branches at the whirls/nodes and try to wire and bend it. But I think you may have missed the window for bending these well.

Some of the nicest azaleas are thin multitrunked. I will take a look and find a good example in a Satsuki Kenkyu.

Another thing to consider is radial root spread.

Thanks!

Yes, I removed the bark on both azaleas and dusted with a rooting hormone with a low IBA%. The small round pot I used a mix of akadama/pumice/charcoal and then topped it with some sphagnum moss to keep it damp. This one I think I watered it maybe once or twice the entire time. It was in morning to midday dappled sunlight then shade the late afternoon till evening. For the 'Dorothy Hayden' I used chopped sphagnum moss and never watered it. This one stayed primarily in the shade. I had another 'DH' whip planned, but my wife hit it with the weed-eater and it lost it's length.

There's some other long whips on some of my other landscape azaleas I've been watching that I will layer off this upcoming spring. I also have some cuttings I'm training into whips, but it's taking some time to get them to the height that I want them to be at.

 

[Deep Sea Diver]

Here’s that little Dorothy Hayden today….going into dormancy soon.
cheers
DSD sends

 

[Deep Sea Diver]

@Glaucus Here’s the best explanation/rational concerning the timing of azalea wiring.

Please let me know if this makes sense.

When to wire.

Bending is best done in mid Feb through April, at least in the Puget Sound region. This gives the best results over a growing year. It’s a time with the best combination of sap flow starting to rise, the wood becoming more supple, the buds and foliage being small. it’s easier to route the wire and bend the trunk.


After Feb/April wiring the cells damaged from bending are repaired and sap flow corrected/rerouted just as it is starting. The sun is low. The plant is not at maximum photosynthesis / growth levels and no shading is needed. From here on an entire season of growth in the desired style is made at the maximum photosynthetic potential possible.


Wiring May through July wiring is a trade off. After flowering pruning wiring is the second easiest time to wire due to the reduced foliage. Yet while trimming back, while making wiring easier, it also reduces the plants productivity at a time of maximum possible photosynthetically driven growth. More importantly, the cellular damage to the plant during wiring requires repair at a time the canopy reduction reduces the azalea’s ability to produce the energy to do this task. Also, after bending in mid-season the azalea is placed in the part shade and watered less as too much sun may damage the plants remaining foliage due to the reduced water needs from pruning and bending. Azalea wired in mid season proceed forward repairing the cells, maximizing sap flow...then pushes growth forward in the new style for the remainder of the year. A season of trade offs, yet another time to wire.

One could say plants wired in early spring also are pruned in mid-summer, what’s the difference? Bending in mid-season diverts energy at a time of maximum growing potential to repair the cellular damage from bending. An azalea merely pruned in mid-season pushes its growth forward at the maximum after pruning rate possible.

One can wire most any other time, except I’d lay off August for big bends in all but the cultivars that possess the supplest wood, i.e. Kazan and the Osakazuki family. That’s when the most damage to the ‘lifeline’ as Nakayama calls it can occur.

Wiring in Sep/Oct is at the time the energy of the tree is focused on vascular growth, consolidating energy in the roots and trunk… thickening the trunk/branches. Wiring then slows/halts trunk thickening due to the cellular damage caused by the bending process and the falling sap flow. Recovery isn’t easy as the next spring ‘s growth will focus on the leaves and buds.

Bending in winter, as you mentioned, is more difficult than bending in full spring/summer, as the sap is down. Being in winter requires the proper gauge of wire. Properly wired, potential damage incurred is also lower, but may not show up until spring. The advantage is an azalea wired during winter can also achieve maximum growth potential for the entire growing season.

Whew! Let me know what you all think about this. I’m going to use it in another venue!

best
DSD sends

 

[Pitoon]

Here’s that little Dorothy Hayden today….going into dormancy soon.
cheers
DSD sends

View attachment 403178

Looking really good! That one was a cutting from my azalea contest entry. Looks like you got some buds there as well. You going to let it flower next season?

That one would be a really nice mame project, it has a nice trunk forming.

 

[Deep Sea Diver]

Looking really good! That one was a cutting from my azalea contest entry. Looks like you got some buds there as well. You going to let it flower next season?

That one would be a really nice mame project, it has a nice trunk forming.

Haven't thought about flowering or further design yet for any of my azaleas.

I'm just finishing my inventory/greenhouse/cold frame/storage projects. Gotta figure a way to install a couple LED bar lights in the greenhouses. The next thing to do is finalize the winter storage plan for the trees overwintering outside.... and then documenting the processes and procedures from the previous year. So I'm writing once again. Perhaps I'll do some posting of the above soon.

We can PM later on down the line and compare notes?

Cheers
DSD sends

 

[Glaucus]

Hmm I wonder for azaleas that if they are bendable how much damage actually occurs if they bend and nothing snaps. I can see that if you bend a pine, you get some stress fractures long before the branch itself breaks. With azaleas, they bend fine until the entire branch breaks off. Tensile strength of biomolecules should actually be among my research expertise. And in our lab many people work on fractures in polymer networks. But for cells, it is a bit different. I get the feeling though that with azaleas at first nothing breaks, and then (almost) everything breaks. But with pines, a few things can break while the remainder stays whole and the brand does not snap off. It would already be an interesting question as to why say pines and azaleas can both be woody. But one is brittle, and the other is not.
Of course in plants it is the extracellular matrix of cellulose that breaks, and then creating a fracture in the cellular tissue as well.

Cells would get deformed, though. And it may be the cells do respond to that in a certain way.

Now sure what the current research on this is. Both the mechanical properties of wood. And the physiological response of plants to bending.

One can have a discussion about the effect of wire on a plant while it is very hot or very cold. And about if it is good to have the wire cut in just a little bit, or not at all.
I don't from experience yet know if when you want to get some extreme bends into an azalea whip, is one period if it being wired into that shape enough for the shape to become permanent?
I get the feeling you wire it in spring after it got the length you need. And then after a few months of growing and before the weather gets really hot, you remove it. And if you had good growth, it should have cut in a tiny bit (also depending on the cultivar growth rate). And then you lay off with the wire for a month as it is peak summer. To reapply the wire again and move it back into the strong shape once more at the end of summer. Then remove the wire before frost.

It is pretty crazy that 2 year old whips that are ready for wiring are only 4 euro/USD in Japan. Three, one could buy 100 of them and practice wiring that way.
I have a few more coming, but they are maybe too precious to wire. Those that I got last year only a few I was able to get some interesting bends in them. One did snap at the apex. And some of the others I didn't want to risk bending them too much and they kinda straightened out a bit after removal of the wire.

This growing of cuttings into 60cm/2feet tall whips is not easy to do, as most do not have the growing conditions. And then to get in the bends the right way also takes some skill.
So for practice, if you have to prune off larger branches. Definitely use them to practice wiring and bending on before you throw them away.
And this is also why it is very good that DSD tries to figure this out. The directional pruning of a cutting. Or the chopping of nursery stock are inferior.
Espectially if you want to grow a flower tower/meika (which most here do not really want to do, though). Chopping nursery stock is probably better if one wants a mame with a fatter trunk base, and then everything covered up with foliage.

 

[Glaucus]

I really like this type of design of a younger bonsai:


And if you have limited movement, you can always develop on very stylized foliage pads and it looks pretty good:


Trick then is to have the sidebranches at a more horizontal and abrupt angle. So break the Y-shape growth pattern that azaleas normally want to have.
Not sure in this case of these branches developed brand new from backbudding. Or if the branch grew at the same time as the main trunk, when they both developed as a new shoot from the base of a flower bud.
I suspect the latter. I wonder if the first really negatively impacts the look.

For some of my own plants where I kept two shoots, then wired, then pruned back one of the two shoots to make the other more dominant and thus the trunk line. I am thinking about removing the original branch because there is plenty of backbudding going on. So maybe branches that you keep very early on are going to become sacrificial branches eventually.

Sorry for the low quality images. Taken from the magazine with a cell phone camera.

 

[AJL]

Many here should know by now that I'm a big azalea fan. As much as I like those thick trunk azaleas, the tall slender thin trunk ones always seem to grab my attention. So I've decided to try growing a couple out myself. I air layered these two long whips.

The one with more foliage is 'Dorothy Hayden' the other is an unknown kurume type with HIH red flowers that turns metallic looking as the flower ages. Hopefully these make it past this winter.

I'll be posting progress pics along the way.

View attachment 403083View attachment 403084View attachment 403086View attachment 403087View attachment 403089

When did you start these layers? Im interested to know the optimum timing for Azaleas from start to finish - though Im aware your climate zone may differ from here in England. Does it help to keep the plants in a polytunnel / cold glasshouse to extend the growing season and promote rooting?

 

[Pitoon]

When did you start these layers? Im interested to know the optimum timing for Azaleas from start to finish - though Im aware your climate zone may differ from here in England. Does it help to keep the plants in a polytunnel / cold glasshouse to extend the growing season and promote rooting?

Maybe a 1 or 1.5 months ago the air layers were started. All depends on your climate. These will be going in the hoop house for winter as the roots have not been established yet.

 

[Pitoon]

Here's another long whip I will be working on, 'Kin nishiki'.

 

[Deep Sea Diver]

Hmm I wonder for azaleas that if they are bendable how much damage actually occurs if they bend and nothing snaps. I can see that if you bend a pine, you get some stress fractures long before the branch itself breaks. With azaleas, they bend fine until the entire branch breaks off. Tensile strength of biomolecules should actually be among my research expertise. And in our lab many people work on fractures in polymer networks. But for cells, it is a bit different. I get the feeling though that with azaleas at first nothing breaks, and then (almost) everything breaks. But with pines, a few things can break while the remainder stays whole and the brand does not snap off. It would already be an interesting question as to why say pines and azaleas can both be woody. But one is brittle, and the other is not.
Of course in plants it is the extracellular matrix of cellulose that breaks, and then creating a fracture in the cellular tissue as well.

Cells would get deformed, though. And it may be the cells do respond to that in a certain way.

Now sure what the current research on this is. Both the mechanical properties of wood. And the physiological response of plants to bending.

There is quite a bit of recent literature about what happens when a branch bends and stays bent.

The most recent literature in 2019 attributes a couple of things going on instead of my proposed merely breaking cells. In retrospect this was a simplistic explanation. But on with the show….

Drilling down into the key events that occur when bending with a bit of the why.

Besides compression and extension of xylem cell wall material on the lower and upper sides, respectively, of a branch subjected to a cantilever load, bending could also involve changes in the shape of wood cells or even some degree of collapse or of separation of cells on the respective sides, or also flow, through the stem cross section from one side of the stem toward the other, of water that is located within the cell walls or lumens (cell chambers) (“poroelasticity,” cf. Hu and Suo, 2012). The total of these effects, to whatever extent they occur and resist or allow bending, are collectively represented by the conventional viscoelastic parameters reviewed above.

Not so tough to untangle this part.

During bonsai bending differential compression and expansion of the xylem cell wall, collapse (breakage) or separation of cells and flow of water are all thought to occur when bending living wood.

I couldn’t find images of this right now, yet this author strained wood by nano indentation and got a good image. The author(s) and calls the resulting movement creep, the result is similar, just not as widespread as bending.



Drilling down further.

During bonsai bending stress, the resistance to movement is mainly a property of the secondary walls of xylem cells rather than of mechanical cells in the bark (fibers, cork). Most bonsai folks know this intuitively as they feel the wood flex as a bend is being performed.

At the xylem level, it appears the secondary walls of xylem cells primarily resist the bending force as it’s microfibrils run longitudinally along the cell. In contrast the primary cell wall flexes as it’s microfibrils run somewhat sinuously along the length of the cell.

Under significant bending stress the primary cell wall microfibrils, which have a much higher water content and a much lower polymer density, don’t significantly resist compression. So when compressed the primary cell wall’s microfibrils probably collapse into the normally water-filled, capillary interstices between cells by forming a sinuous course through the matrix while shrinking

Here’s an image of what is called tension or also compression wood on the right, normal wood (popular) on the left. It is found in areas where stress was experienced on a tree, for example on the upper or downward bend of a branch junction.



Finally the author(s) showed there is a greater resistance to bending hardwoods vs softwoods (Any bonsai hobbyist knows this!)

Our results show that, under cantilever loads, both retarded and instantaneous elastic bending, as well as two kinds of irreversible bending, are of general occurrence in woody branches. Although we found large quantitative variations, in viscoelastic bending, throughout the range of species tested, one apparently consistent difference that our data indicate is a significantly larger average viscoelastic relative to instantaneous elastic compliance in hardwoods (Angiosperms) compared with softwoods (Gymnosperms). This might seem surprising, considering that the xylem of hardwoods, as their name implies, is stiffer and tougher than that of softwoods. The greater retarded-elastic compliance of hardwoods might be due to the presence, in the wood, of cells such as vessel members, fiber-tracheids, and/or abundant xylem parenchyma that are missing in typical softwoods.

…and that’s all for now folks!

Cheers
DSD sends

 

[Deep Sea Diver]

Here's another long whip I will be working on, 'Kin nishiki'.

Nice job @Pitoon !

Here are some I’ve succeeded in growing.

They will be wired as the sap rises in Feb ‘21, with care.

cheers
DSD sends