Vance Wood
Lord Mugo
EVOLUTION OF A MUGO PINE
Unless someone is fortunate enough to study under a master as a student or apprentice where every move and step is monitored and corrections made, progress in learning the art of bonsai can be slow and halting. Often the trees reflect the development of the artist and if they survive the first years of neglect and mistakes will progress along with that individual.
At some point mistakes, or over sights made early will be compounded until a point is reached where these errors must be dealt with if the tree is to ever become world class. Of course this process is dependant on whether or not the artist desires to elevate his work beyond the point it has now attained to. Often frustration and fear will dissuade making this leap of faith with a tree that has been an old friend for perhaps many years. The following will document the progression, or decline if you choose to look at it that way, of a Mugo Pine obtained as nursery stock in 1970.
This Mugo was one of the first trees I obtained after getting out of the Army. I chose this tree because of its powerful trunk, something I had not encountered outside of the collected trees I no longer possessed. It was found at a nursery in a three gallon nursery container common in the trade, and remained in this container for another two years while I agonized over what to do with it. Even then I knew this tree was conflicted but I did not realize how much this conflict was going to bother me some thirty years latter. I have in the past shown this tree, many times, and it has won several awards. Many bonsaists would leave it alone, rationalizing that its past successes justify its obvious weaknesses.
For the last five years or so I have not shown this tree, its conflicting form had come to bother me so much that I had no desire to exhibit it any longer. This fall I decided that I was going to start making good on the promise I had made myself to redesign the trees in my collection that were good enough to show, mostly because they were old, and make them as good as I had them pictured in my mind. I had out grown the designs these trees had grown into and found myself no longer happy with them artistically.
The series of pictures to follow this text may not be of high quality. Many will have to be scanned from photographs which in themselves may not be the best quality. But, you have to remember these prints go back some twenty and more years, before digital cameras and digital soft ware became, first affordable then, sophisticated enough to render a decent image.
Perhaps the biggest problem I had to over come was realizing that I was going to have to reduce this tree by fifty percent, losing one half or the other. Time had taken this tree to a point where both could no longer live in harmony in my mind. With a tree that is probably between sixty and seventy-five years old one does not make a step like I was going to take without serious and painful thought about it. What I was going to do could not be undone. It was also possible that the tree itself would be undone in the process; this was going to be a major reduction of an old tree.
Unless someone is fortunate enough to study under a master as a student or apprentice where every move and step is monitored and corrections made, progress in learning the art of bonsai can be slow and halting. Often the trees reflect the development of the artist and if they survive the first years of neglect and mistakes will progress along with that individual.
At some point mistakes, or over sights made early will be compounded until a point is reached where these errors must be dealt with if the tree is to ever become world class. Of course this process is dependant on whether or not the artist desires to elevate his work beyond the point it has now attained to. Often frustration and fear will dissuade making this leap of faith with a tree that has been an old friend for perhaps many years. The following will document the progression, or decline if you choose to look at it that way, of a Mugo Pine obtained as nursery stock in 1970.
This Mugo was one of the first trees I obtained after getting out of the Army. I chose this tree because of its powerful trunk, something I had not encountered outside of the collected trees I no longer possessed. It was found at a nursery in a three gallon nursery container common in the trade, and remained in this container for another two years while I agonized over what to do with it. Even then I knew this tree was conflicted but I did not realize how much this conflict was going to bother me some thirty years latter. I have in the past shown this tree, many times, and it has won several awards. Many bonsaists would leave it alone, rationalizing that its past successes justify its obvious weaknesses.
For the last five years or so I have not shown this tree, its conflicting form had come to bother me so much that I had no desire to exhibit it any longer. This fall I decided that I was going to start making good on the promise I had made myself to redesign the trees in my collection that were good enough to show, mostly because they were old, and make them as good as I had them pictured in my mind. I had out grown the designs these trees had grown into and found myself no longer happy with them artistically.
The series of pictures to follow this text may not be of high quality. Many will have to be scanned from photographs which in themselves may not be the best quality. But, you have to remember these prints go back some twenty and more years, before digital cameras and digital soft ware became, first affordable then, sophisticated enough to render a decent image.
Perhaps the biggest problem I had to over come was realizing that I was going to have to reduce this tree by fifty percent, losing one half or the other. Time had taken this tree to a point where both could no longer live in harmony in my mind. With a tree that is probably between sixty and seventy-five years old one does not make a step like I was going to take without serious and painful thought about it. What I was going to do could not be undone. It was also possible that the tree itself would be undone in the process; this was going to be a major reduction of an old tree.
