(Ficus) Fusing many, small seedlings to "form a trunk"?

SU2

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Here in FL ficus both fuses trunking, and initiates aerial roots, very readily. I'm newer to Ficus myself, and with a near-100% success propagation rate every time I prune my ficus.M's (or 'benjamina, too little' cultivars), have been accumulating whips/seedlings.

LOVE the idea of using a whole bunch of them, to fuse together over time into a clumpy banyan piece, and have found tons of pics of people setting-up such approaches (see it a lot for Maples as well-- am left confused at why it seems Maple & Ficus are the "go-to" species for this technique)

Problem is I can't find many(any?) good pics of how these fusion-base specimen look 5, 10yrs down the line (IE I can't find good photo proof that the fusing 'completes' and obviates the look of it just being a bunch of separate trees!)

Any pics, or insight on this technique, would be greatly appreciated!! I've already made some haphazard 'fused-group' plantings where I used raffia to kinda "mate" several whips around a small ~0.5" thick lil piece of deadwood so that, as they fuse, they'd have a "hollow center"(and correspondingly thicker trunk girth at that height) but no idea how they'll turn out they were setup in the past half year..
 

Hartinez

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Just google, “fusion bonsai trunk” and quite a few images will pop up of before and after shots.
 

BrianBay9

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Any pics, or insight on this technique, would be greatly appreciated!! I've already made some haphazard 'fused-group' plantings where I used raffia to kinda "mate" several whips around a small ~0.5" thick lil piece of deadwood so that, as they fuse, they'd have a "hollow center"(and correspondingly thicker trunk girth at that height) but no idea how they'll turn out they were setup in the past half year..

For mine I did not use a central support. I just arranged the trunks as desired and used zip ties to hold them tight. Replanted and let run for a growing season.
 

Grovic

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I have a blog dedicated to such things:

Most except for the 💩-looking one are gone ... discarded due to technical or aesthetic mistakes.
has the trunk in the 💩 fused? or is it growing as a very tight spring?
 

Shibui

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I have found there are many failures in fusions.
In many cases I can grow a similar sized trunk in the same time or less with far less problems from a single trunk.
I still have a couple of twin trunk ficus that are OK from fusing 2 seedlings.
 

BrianBay9

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Did you scrape cambium or just let them grow?

Would you consider them fused? As in, you can remove a top and it won't die?

I feel like you can only "see" this on person.

Nice.

Sorce

Did not scrape the bark, just bound them together. They have another years growth on them now, and I've cut back the tops, treating them like a single tree. They seem to respond like a single tree so I'm assuming they're fused.
 

John P.

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has the trunk in the 💩 fused? or is it growing as a very tight spring?
There are some areas where inosculation (fusing) has occurred. Unfortunately the widening of the winding trunk has caused part of the spring to be sprung, probably because as the ficus worked its way up the cone I had to use super glue instead of nails to affix it to the cone. One of these weeks I’m going to address this by applying top pressure with zip ties or the like.

I haven’t given up on this concept as a whole, but agree that great results can be had without going through all this trouble.

It’s always a good idea to use cuttings or layers from the same tree to keep the leaf and bark characteristics the same throughout the new tree.

I am planning to give fusing another shot in a few months with some rooted pomegranate cultivars I bought from Brent at Evergreengardenworks. I also have another ficus “project” growing right now. I think I appreciate the science experiment part of the exercise more than the result, really.
 

W3rk

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Here in FL ficus both fuses trunking, and initiates aerial roots, very readily. I'm newer to Ficus myself, and with a near-100% success propagation rate every time I prune my ficus.M's (or 'benjamina, too little' cultivars), have been accumulating whips/seedlings.

LOVE the idea of using a whole bunch of them, to fuse together over time into a clumpy banyan piece, and have found tons of pics of people setting-up such approaches (see it a lot for Maples as well-- am left confused at why it seems Maple & Ficus are the "go-to" species for this technique)

Problem is I can't find many(any?) good pics of how these fusion-base specimen look 5, 10yrs down the line (IE I can't find good photo proof that the fusing 'completes' and obviates the look of it just being a bunch of separate trees!)

Any pics, or insight on this technique, would be greatly appreciated!! I've already made some haphazard 'fused-group' plantings where I used raffia to kinda "mate" several whips around a small ~0.5" thick lil piece of deadwood so that, as they fuse, they'd have a "hollow center"(and correspondingly thicker trunk girth at that height) but no idea how they'll turn out they were setup in the past half year..
Check out Jerry Meislik/Bonsai Hunk - he has a Ficus blog and he's got some info on fusion.
 

jason biggs

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this is probably my best fusion so far (about 7 yrs ficus burtt- davyi ...
my favourite species for fusion is ficus natalensis...
 

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jason biggs

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the best fusion ficus i have seen is hank from tandamiti (think thats it) bonsai...
he seems to favour natalensis as well...
 
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