Bending an Old Wisteria

[BonsaiMatt]

Howdy Nuts, I wanted to share some details about an old wisteria in my collection.

I got the tree from @lordy a couple years ago, hopefully he can chime in if he recalls any details about the history of the tree. If I remember correctly, it was dug from an old member’s yard around 2010, and has been in this pot ever since. I am not sure exactly how old it is, but the bark and nebari tell me it is quite old. It had flowered before collection, but it has not flowered since being placed in a pot (8 years). I am hoping that the tree will notice that this thread is in the FLOWERING section, and will snap out of its stupor and bloom for me.
A couple older images from lordy, not sure of dates:



As I purchased it:

 

[BonsaiMatt]

Here it is in my garden last spring:


I decided that the foliage (and hopefully flowers one day) was useless way out on that branch, and needed to be closer to the amazing mature bark and nebari. I love the contrast between soft spring flowers/foliage with the old craggy bark of wisteria. To make this contrast happen I would need to either regrow the branch structure, or a significant bend needed to be put somewhere along the main branch to swing it down next to the trunk. The main problem with this goal was that the portion that needed to bend was half dead, and was very stiff.

To prepare for some heavy bending, during the summer of 2018 I was able to separate some of the dead wood from the live vein:

We can see the callus starting to form:

 

[BonsaiMatt]

In mid-March 2019 I decided its time had come, time to try to bend the heavy branch. This was a nerve wracking process, as the wood I was bending was quite thick, and more dead wood needed to be split away to make it happen.

Some before pics:

 

[BonsaiMatt]

I drove a bamboo anchor into the root ball, and used the first large shoulder to pull from. The shoulder provided some extra strength (wood) and more importantly prevented the wire from slipping down the branch as the wire tightened:


The wire was slowly tightened, and as I did this, I carefully enlarged the split in the wood. This was to prevent the split from drifting too far into the good (living) tissue. See the callus from last summer’s split, and the live, bright-colored wood exposed as I cut it:




I will try to bend it more in the future, but this was enough for a first pass. The branches will be wired out next year, I did not want to wire them before the bend was in place because there was a real chance it would fail and the whole branch would be lost.

 

[Hyn Patty]

Awesome! I like that you are being brave and bold, yet careful of the tree at the same time. I hope it does well for you and I like what you are doing with it. I'm sure you know not to feed it much as fertilizing can keep it too happy to flower. My understanding is that when the wisteria is suitably stressed, root bound, etc that it encourages flowering but it still needs plenty of water. Good luck with it and please keep us posted.

 

[BonsaiMatt]

I would love to hear if anyone has ideas about where to take this in the future, a possible front, pot selection (for spring 2020), how to make it flower, etc…
The main styling goal will be to display the flowers, plain and simple. A cascade of weeping blooms next to that bark… What else do you need?

These views are interesting, and have dramatic movement. A strong tilt to the left (first pic below) would be needed/useful from this view. But from these angles it reminds me of a bonsai (a pine or larch bonsai, not a tree), I haven’t decided if I like that or not yet. It feels kitsch to me, but that may change as it develops:






For some reason the views below speak to me the most. They tell more of a story compared to the above images. The vertical trunk line in the first image below is striking (in a good way?), and the balanced and powerful nebari just looks ‘right’ with an upright trunk. And they do not remind me of a larch/pine bonsai:


The below image is becoming my favorite view. This view will need additional bending/wiring to be fully realized, but the nebari is excellent:


And it shows off a gentle sweeping curve in the trunk, and the violent bend I just added:


Thanks for looking!

Please let me know your thoughts, comments, and critiques!

 

[0soyoung]

You are doing nice work to make an interesting deciduous bonsai. However, I think you are doing the wrong things if you are after a flower display. The flower clusters hang down 6 inches or more. IMHO, one could make high sweeping branches to display them and/or have them cascade over the side of the pot.

 

[BonsaiMatt]

You are doing nice work to make an interesting deciduous bonsai. However, I think you are doing the wrong things if you are after a flower display. The flower clusters hang down 6 inches or more. IMHO, one could make high sweeping branches to display them and/or have them cascade over the side of the pot.

Great point oso. The plan is to do just that, a waterfall/cascade of blooms flowing down with the right cascading branch (from final image above). Flowing past the lip of the pot if possible.

 

[atlarsenal]

Personally I liked this design and letting to compound leaves tassel down.


But if you are going with this you are going to have to bring that back branch back to the left.

 

[BonsaiMatt]

Personally I liked this design and letting to compound leaves tassel down.
View attachment 233025

But if you are going with this you are going to have to bring that back branch back to the left.
View attachment 233026

Exactly! I would want that sweeping curve of the right side of the trunk uninterrupted by a back branch. You nailed it.

 

[BonsaiMatt]

Awesome! I like that you are being brave and bold, yet careful of the tree at the same time. I hope it does well for you and I like what you are doing with it. I'm sure you know not to feed it much as fertilizing can keep it too happy to flower. My understanding is that when the wisteria is suitably stressed, root bound, etc that it encourages flowering but it still needs plenty of water. Good luck with it and please keep us posted.

Thanks Patty. Could bloom this spring, I can't tell by looking at the dormant buds whether they are flower buds or not. But I do not have my hopes up. To get it to bloom I followed M. Hagedorn's recommendations (from his crataegus blog: link to that post). I may have effed it up though...

 

[rockm]

FWIW, the Japanese bend thicker wisteria branches by splitting the wood ALONG THE length of the branch using a trunk splitter. Basically, they divide the branch into multiple thinner strips, then move all those strips into position after wrapping them with raffia and wire. Quite large branches and even trunk sections can be quite radically repositioned using the technique. I've used it a couple of times. It works.

 

[lordy]

I really miss this tree. I love the taper, girth, rootage. Sadly, for me, it never bloomed. I like the attention and enthusiasm BonsaiMatt is showering on the tree. A bit of history: I was in a club with an older guy who was very forthcoming with tips and advice. He'd been at it for decades. He was a missionary who, at over the age of 70 went to the Philippines for 2 years to give his time and experience to those less fortunate than he. Upon his return to the states he was diagnosed with melanoma, which ultimately took him. He never threw any cuttings out. Everything got planted. His yard was like a nursery. He wanted the club members to take and nurture anything they wanted. One of the trees I got was this wisteria. A true gentleman. RIP Jim Rieden.

 

[BonsaiMatt]

I really miss this tree. I love the taper, girth, rootage. Sadly, for me, it never bloomed. I like the attention and enthusiasm BonsaiMatt is showering on the tree. A bit of history: I was in a club with an older guy who was very forthcoming with tips and advice. He'd been at it for decades. He was a missionary who, at over the age of 70 went to the Philippines for 2 years to give his time and experience to those less fortunate than he. Upon his return to the states he was diagnosed with melanoma, which ultimately took him. He never threw any cuttings out. Everything got planted. His yard was like a nursery. He wanted the club members to take and nurture anything they wanted. One of the trees I got was this wisteria. A true gentleman. RIP Jim Rieden.

Cheers lordy, thanks for the background. I always love hearing the stories behind trees and the people who've touched them. The word patina comes to mind. But a living patina, hard to explain...

Hope retirement is treating you well!

 

[BonsaiMatt]

Bent it some more this winter.

 

[BonsaiMatt]

No flowers again this year, but enjoying the sunshine today.

 

[Leo in N E Illinois]

Nice, I love the girth of the lower trunk, and the nice nebari in there. I would not have recurved the finer branches back to the right, I would have kept them going to the left. It is okay to cross the trunk line. The curve back to the right looks forced. The hand of man versus nature. If nature caused it to grow left after the top was broken, it should keep going left. What would change to force it to go to the right?

Although I have to admit, I was with @atlarsenal in that I would not have brought the branch down.

I have never had a wisteria with this much age. My younger wisteria routinely, somewhat irregularly, with no predictable pattern, backbuds on the lower trunk. If you wanted to bring foliage & blooms in towards the trunk, you could just wait for back buds to occur. Repotting it to a container that holds more media, it will flush with growth, often wild growth. Followed by a hard prune back, you should explode with buds.

The "broken branch" look just is not my favorite.

Though I will admit, your wisteria is 3 decades older and better developed than my 5 year old wisteria. So I will say I like yours "better than I like mine".

ANd it is very possible, after a few years of settling into this design, this will win me over. In other words, I don't hate it. It is just not something I would have done.

 

[BonsaiMatt]

“Oh, you know, strikes and gutters, ups and downs.”
-The Dude

Applies to bonsai too apparently.

Last summer this wisteria took a tumble off my patio during a thunderstorm, and snapped the trunk. I was really bummed about it. It wasn't a complete break, and it's still attached. Wisteria don't heal well, and their deadwood rots fast. So I always knew the trunk was going to have a shari running up it because of the large chops that were there when got the tree. I had hoped that I could preserve the trunk a while longer, but that storm said nope. Seems like the rot has compromised the structural integrity of the trunk, so I will be removing the dead wood and preserving what remains.

Snap:




Those dark spots on the lower trunk are basically hollow, the shari will extend almost to the base.

But wait, what are those fat buds on the lower right? They don't look like normal leaf buds...

After a decade in a pot without flowering, it looks like it will bloom this year!






Pretty excited about the flower buds, I'll share some pics as it blooms. Gotta take the good with the bad I guess.

 

[BonsaiMatt]

 

[leatherback]

Sooo.. The trunk lives AND you have flowers.
Breaks add visual age to trees.
Lucky break!