Conifer idenrification

[B.uneasy]

Can you guys tell me what kind of tree this is?

 

[Cascading-Echinocactus]

It looks like some species of picea. picea abies?
The cones look to big to be picea rubens or picea mariana

 

[GGB]

identifying spruce IMO is very difficult and I'm a pro with some genus. Picea abies is a good guess since they're planted all over the place ornamentals

 

[B.uneasy]

I pulled the cones off of the tree, and they had a pretty decent tug to them. Do you think they are even ready to germinate or they still needed time to mature?

 

[Aeast]

Norway

 

[Japonicus]

Norway. I second that emotion.

 

[B.uneasy]

Good material? Would I be wasting time working on this species, or are they good bonsai subjects?

 

[Wires_Guy_wires]

Walter Pall seems to own a bunch of those if you're looking for examples.
I like them! I have two picea abies.

Don't count on a lot of backbudding, work with what you have. But they're a very nice species to work with imho.

 

[Leo in N E Illinois]

Picea abies - Norway spruce. Once the bracts of the cone separate the seed starts falling out. Those bracts are at least partially open. Lift a few, see if you see the winged seed attached to the underside of the bract. Usually 2 seeds on the underside of each bract. Some bracts will still have seed, most probably has fallen out.

Norway spruce makes fairly decent bonsai. Gets ignored in North America because it is overplanted as a landscape plant, and as such gets yawns of boredom from most people. ALso North America has a number of really nice for bonsai native spruces. For example Engelmann Spruce, Colorado blue spruce, Black Hills Spruce & others. But there is nothing wrong with Picea abies, as Walter Pall's trees serve to demonstrate.

 

[bonsaichile]

Good material? Would I be wasting time working on this species, or are they good bonsai subjects?

Honestly? I think you are wasting your time trying to grow bonsai from seed. Unless you are 15 and have a lifetime ahead of you. IMHO

 

[B.uneasy]

Honestly? I think you are wasting your time trying to grow bonsai from seed. Unless you are 15 and have a lifetime ahead of you. IMHO

Well.. Your wrong... I am 16!!

 

[B.uneasy]

Honestly? I think you are wasting your time trying to grow bonsai from seed. Unless you are 15 and have a lifetime ahead of you. IMHO

And honestly, in an other 16 years do you know how badly I would regret not starting all of these seeds? Crap, I would feel bad next year. I myswell try.

 

[Wires_Guy_wires]

And honestly, in an other 16 years do you know how badly I would regret not starting all of these seeds? Crap, I would feel bad next year. I myswell try.

Hear hear!
Just because you might not be able to finish it, doesn't mean you shouldn't start it.

 

[B.uneasy]

Hear hear!
Just because you might not be able to finish it, doesn't mean you shouldn't start it.

Hopefully that is the reason I am having kids for someday :/

 

[Leo in N E Illinois]

Hopefully that is the reason I am having kids for someday :/

Kids!!!! Always the ungrateful bastards will never get interested in bonsai. Seriously, it is a mistake to assume any of your kids would get interested in your hobby. Sometimes they do, but it is much more rare than you might think.

But in time you will make "bonsai friends" and possibly even mentor a bonsai novice or two, and as they learn, you will move trees along, out of your collection to someone else. Don't think of your collection of trees as being "until death do we part", think of yourself as temporary custodian. Plan on moving everything along at some point before you are too old to take care of them. Think trees come, trees go. And then there is the buy-sell-swap-trade. I always have a tree coming or going.

With seedlings, you are bringing them through a phase of their development. And if you really are only 16, you have many many good years ahead of you to develop seedlings. And if you are my age, over 65, I still start seedlings. And damn it, I intend to see them at the Nationals some 30 years from now.

 

[just.wing.it]

if you are my age, over 65, I still start seedlings. And damn it, I intend to see them at the Nationals some 30 years from now

That's the true Bonsai spirit!

 

[Potawatomi13]

While not growing Bonsai my dear departed father did garden. Hybridizing Iris, growing different flowering plants and vegetables. He loved flowers and growing things. Also I grew some flowers I thought pretty. When 11-12 years on a library trip to get a turtle book a Bonsai display caught my fancy, A Vine Maple grove about this time of year. So beautiful . This was 62 years past. Mom and Dad both loved flowers and growing things. I still do and bless them for it.