Buddhist pine

[pkTheory]

A friend of mine brought me this tree back from a Florida flea market. It is a Podocarpus macrophyllus. I live in zone 7b. Any care instructions or ideas for styling would be appreciated.

-Mike

 

[jk_lewis]

Looks like you have a nice specimen with small leaves. If you scroll down this page -- http://www.bonsai-bci.com/species-guide-by-common-name -- you will come across some very good info on Podocarpus as bonsai.

Yours is a bit small do do much styling with yet. I think that in the spring you will want to repot this into some more granular, inorganic soil. It might go into a pot that is 2X the size of this while it grows.

These are very good bonsai subjects, and will take fairly cold temps. Mine have been outside in the mid 20s (F), and while they weren't happy, they did OK.

 

[MrFancyPlants]

I was going to say "keep from freezing, and be careful with the roots" Glancing the care sheet Jim kindly provided "Roots should only be pruned by 10- 15%."

Cute tree and good stock.

 

[pkTheory]

I pruned my tree today to see branch structure better here are some pictures.

 

[october]

Looks good ok.. This is still a young tree. Some of the secondary branches have not even hardened off yet. Although this tree really cannot become a convincing bonsai at this time. Given a few more years, it will be on its way. One thing I can say is the it is the thinner, younger branches that you want to keep an eye on. It is most likely these that will become your main branches. The older branches that are already there are a bit thick in comparison to the trunk. These will always be out of scale and prevent the illusion of a full size tree in nature. The trunk will always need to be quite a bit thicker than the branches to pull off this image.

Rob