BC bonsai from a Knee

rockm

Spuds Moyogi
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There was a post a while back that talked about using bald cypress knees to create bonsai. I mentioned that I have a couple of friends who had a knee grafted with a BC sapling. This is a photo of that tree taken a couple of days ago. This is the front of the tree. It's becoming a pretty nice tree...FWIW, they say it has produced knees of its own rather quickly in the last few years.
 

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Hm, interesting concept, but not sure I understand the purpose here. There are a gazillion bald cypress out there in the swamps that can be collected reliably. Seems to me those would offer better material than a Frankenstein grafted tree.

The base on this tree looks nice. I’m guessing the graft union - which is hidden by foliage in this particular photo - is not so nice.

It is intriguing about the knees. Wonder if there is a genetic component to which BC have a tendency to grow knees more readily.
 
Hm, interesting concept, but not sure I understand the purpose here. There are a gazillion bald cypress out there in the swamps that can be collected reliably. Seems to me those would offer better material than a Frankenstein grafted tree.

The base on this tree looks nice. I’m guessing the graft union - which is hidden by foliage in this particular photo - is not so nice.

It is intriguing about the knees. Wonder if there is a genetic component to which BC have a tendency to grow knees more readily.
The thinking is "Why not" 😁 There were a few folks selling grafted knees like this a few years ago. No less than a tanuki juniper, or a grafted shimpaku on a Rocky Mountain juniper body...The union on this tree in the front is almost imperceptible. The back of the tree, not so much. You'll note that the knee portion of the the tree has no foliage. All of the branching and leaves are from the grafted sapling. Knee tissue won't produce foliage.
 
Looks more natural in the sense that it has knees like most in the wild do.
 
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