How much foliage can I remove

[FiestaRed]

I have a couple of healthy Cypress 'Boulevard' shrubs that I'd like to fashion into a literati style. Trunk leaning backwards and the small amount of foliage pointing away from the trunk, eventually removing probably 60% of the foliage.

Having read that's it's not advisable to remove to much foliage in one go, how much could I safely remove without causing stress to the plant? Or, if I were to remove the foliage in stages, how long would I need to leave the plant to recover between stages please?

Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Colorado]

Hard to say without photos. A photo or two of the plant would be helpful to answering your question

 

[Paradox]

Agreed, we need to see what we are talking about to give advice

 

[FiestaRed]

 

[FiestaRed]

Hope these help.

 

[Colorado]

Very helpful. Personally I would take a more conservative approach and reduce in stages. You could remove some of the bottom branches now, a few more in the spring and next summer.

If you want to take a more aggressive approach, you could probably remove 60% and be okay but there’s a risk it will die.

 

[FiestaRed]

Very helpful. Personally I would take a more conservative approach and reduce in stages. You could remove some of the bottom branches now, a few more in the spring and next summer.

If you want to take a more aggressive approach, you could probably remove 60% and be okay but there’s a risk it will die.

Thanks for the reply and thanks for the help. I'd sooner be on the safe side and work in stages if that is better for the plant.

 

[Tele]

There are more stages to be done like the repotting.
Maybe best to wait untill next spring to repot and cut back a bit? Your trees will have gathered more energy to grow new roots and foliage.
Side benefit is that when you loose some roots the leftover roots will have less work because you remove foliage aswell.
You´ll need at some point to get it in some smaller pot and cut back. I would go for 50% roots / 50% foliage minimum because your trees are young and look very healthy.

 

[Bonsai Nut]

I'm not sure this is a suitable tree for a literati bonsai.

Literati is all about the trunk. In fact, think of a literati as a trunk where the foliage is there only to complement the design given by the line of the trunk. You can't have a literati with a straight trunk - the two concepts are mutually exclusive. Straight trunk bonsai would be formal upright, slant, or perhaps windblown.

To answer your question about foliage - I would first focus on transplanting the tree from nursery soil into good bonsai soil, then wait for it to recover before styling. If you style first, and remove a lot of foliage, and then repot, you may take a tree that you have already weakened and then weaken it further. Even if the tree didn't die, you could get die-back or branch loss, in which case your design work could be ruined.

 

[rockm]

You CAN make a literati with a straight trunk, but it takes some doing and alot of technical expertise. Additionally, this species might not be appropriate. The example below is a hackberry, which responds to drastic treatment well. Literati is, indeed, all about the trunk. Are the trunks underneath all that foliage interesting, or mostly taperless telephone poles? Formal upright is probably a better avenue for these...

 

[Potawatomi13]

Surenge - minimalist literati / penjing

Saw a post with this link elsewhere and thought I'd share. The person seemed to be describing the style as "surenge penjing" but the translation of this page makes it sound like Surenge may be an artist - I really don't know...

www.bonsainut.com

https://www.bonsainut.com/threads/on-the-hunt-for-young-virginia-pine-to-develop.57143/

Literati can have straight trunks. However newest stage in evolution has much more movement added(particularly by westerners).