"....same size as some of the ones in the picture..." What trees in what picture are you refering to pls
Depth of flooding of Bald Cypress affects buttressing??
- Thread starter Joe Dupre'
- Start date
Maiden69
Masterpiece
I was replying to your post, so I thought it was understood I was referring to the same picture you were referring to."....same size as some of the ones in the picture..." What trees in what picture are you refering to pls
Ok...was a little mixed up for a minute. On track now. Thanks. It is just hard for me to imagine that one of those big trees with a very big root ball when collected now fits in an Anderson flat. Then I saw the root ball after he reduced it and raked it out before leaving the swamp. Great trees and I'd like to get a nice one somewhere. Hard to get them shipped by people who collect.
Maiden69
Masterpiece
Yes, BC like tridents can take a huge root reduction and don't skip a beat as long as you do it at the right moment. Like he explains on the video, right as buds start swelling.
BillsBayou
Chumono
I put 1" trees in 5-gallon buckets with only 6-inches of soil. The trunks bulked out fairly well over a few years and gave me a buttress. The roots were crap because of the narrow bucket. Two of the trees had knees.
The article gives a different reason for collecting 12-18' trees:
Bills Bayou..."I put 1" trees in 5-gallon buckets with only 6-inches of soil. The trunks bulked out fairly well over a few years and gave me a buttress. The roots were crap because of the narrow bucket. Two of the trees had knees."
I can't learn if I don't ask questions.
So what would happen to the same tree in the same bucket with 10" of soil?
Same tree 15 gallon barrel both 6 & 10" of soil?
Thanks Bill
I can't learn if I don't ask questions.
So what would happen to the same tree in the same bucket with 10" of soil?
Same tree 15 gallon barrel both 6 & 10" of soil?
Thanks Bill
BillsBayou
Chumono
The caption card for that first video is one of the few photos of myself that I like. Pretty much ever. That tree nearly killed my friend Mitch. He was pale and sweating halfway out the swamp. He didn't look good at all. We left the tree and went out for lunch. He went home and I went back for the tree. He's a great guy, by the way.
But I digress... Back to the issues and articles at hand:
Randy Bennett is my sensei. Randy has been methodically studying bald cypress for more than 40 years. I defer to his knowledge of bald cypress. If anyone sees discrepancies between his writings and my own, go with Randy. We both knew and learned from Vaughn Banting; Randy for decades, me for only a few years.
Here's my own theories on bald cypress. Some of it comes from the Brown and Montz book mentioned earlier. Some comes from haphazard research where I pull at threads from various articles trying to tie them together.
Brown and Montz concluded that the function of knees is to store starch. The only reasoning they gave is from an iodine test that revealed the presence of starch. I tried the same experiment two weeks ago and did not get the result. But last weekend, a different knee in a different swamp did have large sections of blackened areas from iodine exposure. If anyone has a spare US$3.4 million lying around, I have a project proposal that will give answers, but will be of zero economic value.
Starch was their conclusion, but it was my beginning to understand the relationship between water, knees, buttressing, stress, hormones, and growth. It's all related in my opinion. OPINION, not FACT. Get me that 3.4 million and we can discuss facts.
Brown and Montz noted the presence of knees in areas that flood or are close enough to the local water table to be inundated. Knees were also present in carbon-poor soils. Knees appear on bald cypress that suffer some sort of routine stress. They offered no conclusions on why deep water trees produced no knees. In one example of knee growth, an area which had been deeply flooded for decades had bald cypress trees with no knees. But when the area was drained and kept drained, the trees quickly produced knees.
Given our backyard applications, I doubt we could provide enough water to discourage knee growth. Randy recommends a water level below the soil level in your pot. That's good enough for me if knees are all you want to grow. Which brings us to the buttress.
Bald cypress do not drown when constantly growing in water. Knees lack lenticels for gas exchange and aerenchyma for gas transport. So how do the roots breathe? Aerenchyma exists in the drowned roots themselves. Interestingly, a bald cypress that has been growing in well-draining soil has roots which lack aerencyma. But drown the bald cypress and a process called schizogenesis takes place. In this process, the inner tissues of roots will crack and open up the channels, aerencyma, necessary for gas transport. If you drown a bald cypress and notice the roots thickening, the roots are not waterlogged. Just the opposite. They're filled with plant gasses (oxygen / carbon dioxide).
Schizogenesis causes a fattening of plant tissues. As far up as the schizogenic tissues are needed, the tree will produce them. I've seen this happen with bald cypress I've collected. Trees that were growing just above the water table, would show cracks in the outer bark and a brighter orange colored bark would emerge as the tissues swelled. Want a fatter base? Alternate periods of wet soil and flooded soil in your pots.
Stressing bald cypress, such as letting them become root-bound, triggers a response to chain excess glycol molecules (sugars) together into starch molecules. Knees, as starch-storage mechanisms, are encouraged to grow so long as they are part of the stress/starch process. When the tree is running a glycol deficit, starches are broken down in to sugars necessary for plant metabolism. This is triggered by interruptions in the balance of auxin and cytokinin. Then gibberellin comes out to play.
Auxins are produced by the meristems. These are cells at the end of branches which continue to grow through a balanced relationship between auxins and cytokinin. When we trim a branch, auxins are no longer being produced. Cytokinin concentrations go up. This triggers adventicious buds and we get back-budding.
All this new grow requires energy. Gibberellin in the roots is no longer being suppressed by auxins. Gibberellin and cytokinin will cause elongation of stems and longer internodes. Gibberellin is also the trigger in seed germination. It triggers the breakdown of starches stored in a seed so that plant sugars stored by the parent can be used by the new plant.
There's so much more to this that numerous articles are still being written about the functions and relationships of these and other plant hormones.
Here's where I go off the rails and into 3.4million needed for research.
It occurred to me, gibberellin breaks down starch for new growth and knees are storage mechanisms in stressed bald cypress. Producing knees in bald cypress requires us to discourage gibberellin production. Stress the tree with flooding and bound roots, but do NOTHING to the branches. Let it all go wild. Unknown to me while I was coming up with my theories, Randy was flooding and not working on a bald cypress in his collection. His tree developed 23 knees.
I suffer from zero experimental research, confirmation biases, a belief in anecdotal evidence, and a lack of US$3.4 million. Oh, and a schmuck horticulture graduate who thinks he can get his PhD working for me studying bald cypress knees.
But that's it. Pretty much everything I know about these relationships. Want knees and a fat buttress? Drown your tree for a few years beneath a few inches of water. Like your buttress but want knees? Keep the water level below the soil line of your tree. Want a fat buttress with no knees? Grow the tree with a few inches of water above the soil line and keep the tree trimmed. Have knees and want to halt their growth? Repot the tree and begin styling. Want to keep your knees alive? Do your heavy cuts on the trunk before growing the knees, not after.
rockm
Spuds Moyogi
you'd get nothing near what you'd get if you simply planted the tree in the ground and waited five or six years. ANY containerization slows growth at some point. Planting in larger containers can help, but once that container. If you look at the collected trees in the video and on most of those newly dug trees, you will notice the majority of the roots are growing laterally, not downwards. If you're in Oregon, you can probably simply plant this species in the ground. It's hardy to Zone 4...
BillsBayou
Chumono
Depends on the depth of the bucket. It's a rough estimate on how much of the trunk you want to swell.
I like the barrel idea. I know someone who can get me empty 55-gallon olive oil barrels cheaper and sturdier than a rain barrel.
Here's an example of what serious depth can do to a bald cypress. These trees live in Catahoula Lake in central Louisiana. The lake is managed by the Army Corps for recreational hunting purposes. We call these "coke bottle trees".
BillsBayou
Chumono
Incorrect. It would be more accurate to say: You get nothing like what you'd get if you simply planted the tree in the ground and waited five or six years.
I left a few pots on the ground and ignored them for the past 5 or 6 years. Roughly date accurate because I lost my daughter 5 years ago and pretty much ignored most of the things going on around me.
In an earlier experiment, I put trees of roughly the same size, about an inch in diameter, into five gallon buckets.
The trees that grew through the pot are now 5 or 6 inches across. The trees in the flooded container only doubled in size to about 2 or 3 inches.
Only the flooded trees are useful as bonsai. They developed knees, their bases and their lower trunks fattened. The taper narrows down nicely for our aesthetics.
The trees that grew through the pots have no discernible taper until you get over 5 feet in height. Even if the trees weren't in 1-gallon nursery containers, I can tell you the trunk at the soil line would not be very attractive (bonsai-wise). I've seen landscape bald cypress. The trunks go into the ground with very little flare.
rockm
Spuds Moyogi
All due respect, you are in La. Not incorrect...The guy asking is in Oregon. I'm in Va. Things are different depending on location. I was speaking from my experience in growing them in a relatively colder climate. Your growing season is at least a month longer than either here or Oregon...just sayin...
BillsBayou
Chumono
Here in NOLA, a tree in a bucket of water grows differently than a tree in the ground. My inference from your post was that the difference between the two is simply growth rate. The differences I see go beyond growth rate. The difference is in the structure of the tissue itself, where that structure is changed, and what it does to the shape of the base of the tree related to water depth. The other difference I see is that a bald cypress planted in the ground without a high water table, is an ugly unappealing boring base. The water table in my backyard is about 1 foot below the surface of the soil (according to the holes my new puppy digs (the little bastard)). Even at that shallow depth, bald cypress grow ugly in the ground compared to what happens in waterlogged or outright flooded pots. Your mileage may vary.
If I had property in Oregon or Virginia with a stream, I'd plant it in the stream.
Cajunrider
Imperial Masterpiece
Thank you for a post chock full of great information. This is why is thread is now quoted on my BC species study thread.
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Maiden69
Masterpiece
This is the main factor. The BC that I bought in a 1 gal container spring last year is the same thickness as the 45+ gal BC's that were planted in our neighborhood the year before we moved. And they have been in the ground for 3 years, while the one I have, has been in the water for the same amount of time. The big difference is that my tree barely breaks 6' and the ones on the street are near 20'+
For example a 45 gal container BC, according to the website 3"+ thickness 10'+ height. They look like sticks on a pot.
Maiden69
Masterpiece
Quick picture... I know they are not the same species, but this is my "1 gal" BC, and behind it is the red oak that was panted in my backyard on Sep 2020 from a 50 gal nursery container I think. Similar to the one on the picture on my post above. I removed the bag late fall and planted in that bucket backfilling with large pumice and lava. It is pending a major root reduction and a severe chop unless I decide to ground layer the mess of roots that were created by the nursery container I received it in. Knowing what I know now I would have addressed those before moving into the 2 gal bag I used late spring 2021.
This little sucker is beginning its 3rd season this year from a seedling bought spring 2021. Flare is a little over 5", and it is roughly 4 feet tall. In water, all the time.
This little sucker is beginning its 3rd season this year from a seedling bought spring 2021. Flare is a little over 5", and it is roughly 4 feet tall. In water, all the time.
Cajunrider
Imperial Masterpiece
Or you can be bold and do a root reduction severe enough to get rid of all the mess.
Michael P
Omono
I grew a group of three bald cypress in my fish pond for years. At first they were in a mortar tub with holes in the sides and bottom, later just sitting on a plastic milk crate with roots freely growing into the water. The root flares were always just above water level. I chopped the trees once a year in late winter, but did almost nothing else to them.
These trees grew nice fluted bases but no knees. I would like to show you photos, but I killed all but one of them three years ago by taking them out of the pond and putting them back in a mortar tub, but this time with no holes. The tub was filled with bonsai soil and kept saturated with water. Long story short, I burned them with fertilizer. (Hits forehead with fist.)
The lone survivor was the least attractive. But I put it in an oversized mica pot with conventional bonsai soil, and kept it in a saucer of water during the summer. It recovered, and I started designing it as a flat top. Last year I selected major branches. It was still very mediocre.
Over the winter I read all of Randy's articles. I looked at the tree, and decided if it had a better buttress and some knees it might make a tolerable bonsai. So earlier this week I re-potted it into a shallower and wider container with Randy's suggested MiracleGro soil. It is back in the pond with water level just below the surface of the soil.
I will post photos tomorrow. Time will tell.
These trees grew nice fluted bases but no knees. I would like to show you photos, but I killed all but one of them three years ago by taking them out of the pond and putting them back in a mortar tub, but this time with no holes. The tub was filled with bonsai soil and kept saturated with water. Long story short, I burned them with fertilizer. (Hits forehead with fist.)
The lone survivor was the least attractive. But I put it in an oversized mica pot with conventional bonsai soil, and kept it in a saucer of water during the summer. It recovered, and I started designing it as a flat top. Last year I selected major branches. It was still very mediocre.
Over the winter I read all of Randy's articles. I looked at the tree, and decided if it had a better buttress and some knees it might make a tolerable bonsai. So earlier this week I re-potted it into a shallower and wider container with Randy's suggested MiracleGro soil. It is back in the pond with water level just below the surface of the soil.
I will post photos tomorrow. Time will tell.
