Contorted Japanese Flowering Apricot

bonhe

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It is so beautiful with one flower!!
Sorry, please let me post one picture here. I am planning to do airlayering on my grafted ume next year. The remained one will look similar to your tree later on :)
IMG_0173 - Copy.jpg
OK, I am out of here. Thanks for understanding, Fredtruck
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Paulpash

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It is so beautiful with one flower!!
Sorry, please let me post one picture here. I am planning to do airlayering on my grafted ume next year. The remained one will look similar to your tree later on :)
View attachment 221597
OK, I am out of here. Thanks for understanding, Fredtruck
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I was under the impression that ume were hard / almost impossible to air layer. I've bought some Prunus whips to root graft. Please post your results - I'd be really interested if it takes.
 

bonhe

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I was under the impression that ume were hard / almost impossible to air layer. I've bought some Prunus whips to root graft. Please post your results - I'd be really interested if it takes.
Thanks. I will post the result
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JudyB

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I like this photo of this tree the best of all I’ve seen. Just the right amount of open blossoms and the promise of more to come. Also so simple (in a good way) with the almost black and white composition.
 

fredtruck

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I've been trying different techniques of photographing my contorted ume. This picture is called "Played" because that's how it is. Played. At first you may have to look hard to see the flowers, but they're there.

single shot played.jpg
At the end of the season, the flowers that open are small, and they decay quickly.
 

davetree

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Nice pic. It looks older. I would like to see the design simplified, to make it look older still. Still a beautiful tree. Thanks.
 

leatherback

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Hi Fred,

I love the tree. It is lovely.
However, I started this thread with the first images, when the crown was way less dense. And in a way, I think the curent canopy has outgrown itself. I wonder whether it would not be a better looking tree with less dense branching. I do realize it is not easy to get this dense crown. But it feels too healthy if you know what I mean?
 

fredtruck

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Over the past few years, as I watched and recorded my Contorted White Japanese Flowering Apricot’s development, I have been making plans for changes I wanted to implement at the right time.

A few weeks ago, I noticed the ume wasn’t growing at the rate I expected. I also remembered that the flowering I expected in the winter, while ok, wasn’t up to past levels.

This slowdown has happened before with the ume. I was able to correct it by increasing the size of the container. I had one in mind that was of the same type as the Yamaaki rope-rim pot it was currently in, but was about twice as deep and 3 inches wider. That container was a white Chinese pot. Since it was larger than the Yamaaki pot, I slip potted my tree. Within a couple of days, I saw new shoots popping out.

The other changes I planned to make came about as a result of the natural ramification my ume exhibits. Apricots are usually considered difficult trees to ramify, but mine, maybe because it is a contorted type, has always ramified easily, but this often came at a cost of dieback. Not sure exactly what I was going to do with the deadwood that was slowly piling up, I resisted the urge to prune it off. Beginning in 2012, I left the dead branches in place.

My ume is almost black. This makes for a very strong contrast in the winter with the delicate white flowers, but it also makes lime sulphur fairly ineffective as a bleach for the deadwood. The best I could get was a dark gray tone which was not visible against a dark background to set off the flowers.

I began to look around for alternatives. The solution I came up with is not traditional, but it puts light inside the tree, where it is needed to make the deadwood visible. I used iridescent pearl acrylic paint. At first, this paint had a jarring, metallic effect, but I could see over the ensuing weeks that it was slowly modulating due to weathering. This will continue.

The real benefit of the paint is that it highlighted the contorted nature of much of the deadwood.

Following are two stereo images, the first with a white background and the second with a black background. If you look closely, you can see the deadwood in the white background image, but not so clearly as with the black.

247010

And now, the black...

247011
 

Wires_Guy_wires

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Forgive my cheeky mind, but I see a giant dildo in the second to last picture, it's pointing upwards directly towards the tree.
I don't know if that was intended, but the internet will notice for sure.
 

petegreg

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Pardon me, Fred, I like the most of your trees, but this one looked better when growing upright. Please, do not feel offended.
 

fredtruck

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My contorted white Japanese flowering apricot has continued to develop along its own wayward lines. By this, I mean when you look at the tree from the head-on position, not from the traditional side view, the bulk of the tree seems open, with clusters of flower buds here and there. At the moment, there are only a few flowers open, but that will change very soon.

This ume is a cascade bonsai. In the cascade bonsai classification, there is the waterfall descriptor. A waterfall cascade is one in which there are multiple descending branches.

This form developed gradually, in an organic fashion. It makes for a good, rugged support for the flowers, just now coming into play.

Ume 1-4-21 2D-2.jpg
 

JudyB

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SOOO gorgeous. Please share more photos as the flowers open, such a nice one Fred.
 
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