I'm not callus....just curious.

Attila Soos

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...however in the phloem, the transport is source to sink, and can travel to wherever it is needed.

Dave

Stand corrected. The sap flow in the phloem can be bi-directional, according to where the sugar sinks are (sinks can be the roots, but also the fruits are big sugar sinks).
 

HotAction

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Stand corrected. The sap flow in the phloem can be bi-directional, according to where the sugar sinks are (sinks can be the roots, but also the fruits are big sugar sinks).

Developing buds are also large sinks. Also, in the spring, the roots act as source and the branch tips act as sinks.

Dave
 

Attila Soos

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Developing buds are also large sinks. Also, in the spring, the roots act as source and the branch tips act as sinks.

Dave

Very interesting, and makes sense. During growing season, the leaves are mostly the source. But when the tree emerges from dormancy, the roots are the source, since they have the storage of sugars. So, the flow of nutrients is seasonal, and cyclical.
 

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Very interesting, and makes sense. During growing season, the leaves are mostly the source. But when the tree emerges from dormancy, the roots are the source, since they have the storage of sugars. So, the flow of nutrients is seasonal, and cyclical.

Yep, that's about it. But also during the growing season, sugars move from leaves further up the branch tips to the growing shoot tips, as well as into other areas for storage.

For the most part it is the cyclical pattern that the majority flow follows though.

Dave
 

Rick Moquin

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Developing buds are also large sinks. Also, in the spring, the roots act as source and the branch tips act as sinks.

Dave

Very interesting, and makes sense. During growing season, the leaves are mostly the source. But when the tree emerges from dormancy, the roots are the source, since they have the storage of sugars. So, the flow of nutrients is seasonal, and cyclical.

Yep, that's about it. But also during the growing season, sugars move from leaves further up the branch tips to the growing shoot tips, as well as into other areas for storage.

For the most part it is the cyclical pattern that the majority flow follows though.

Dave

Time for the monkey wrench :D:D

That is why fertilization, "proper fertilization" at the "proper time" with "the proper fertilizer" will pay large dividends.
 

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My takeaway from that is that you think that callus tissue can transfer nutrients. Am I right?

My question arises when I realize that the examples you use to back up your argument/case don't really have anything to do with Callus tissue transporting nutrients. Its the cambium that's transporting the nutrients. There isn't a break in cambium for the callus to wall off (if the graft takes) so your examples don't really support the argument.

Right?

No I don't feel callus tissue has anything at all to do with what is being taked about here. Nutrient flow does not take place in the scar tissue but at the thin cambium wall.

The reason I collected these photos was to present a scenario by which we could remove uninjured parts of a tree to support the argument. In other words there are no uninjured parts of the tree to support nutrient flow. The tree has been entirely changed and every square millimeter of skin has been replaced by a junction of scar tissue. So in this case these trees which begin to fruit by the second year are recieving nutrient flow to the roots from the foilage via this scarred area on the trunk. It is easy to see in my photo's that these trees do indeed have substantial amounts of scar tissue and in some cases persistes on the trees for decades and finally reaching the ground to produce a hybrid on it's own roots eventually.

I have one more photo to post later of my own tree and a good example of this method. Thats the good thing about Al, I find the photo's on real trees or provide examples of the work from my own collection. What you won't here from me is some parroted example of something that may or may not be plant theory or hypothisis.

It is not my desire to change anyones idea about how a plant works or how scar tissue effects a tree. I just know by experience based on 55 years of living in an area rich with world knowledge about how to make plants work harder is valuable. The idea of girdleing trees as I have shown here is unimaginable to many I think, yet here it is...
 

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A week or so ago debate insued over callus tissue and it's ability to transfer nutrients or not. Some said no, I said yes. I said I had some pictures to share and now I can relate what I have and maybe more discussion can move along.

Mark's quote above suggests that rolling callus tissue is a poor conductor of nutrients due to the nature of callus tissue which for all intents and purposes is actually akin to cancer via growth cells out of control. My contention is that callus tissue is a defence mechanisim for a tree damaged and in a state of shock. While I agree that a callus is a poor conductor of nutrients my contention is that nutrient travel does not take place in the callus tissue but much deeper at the cambium which knits almost within days of damage. The callus tissue is a bandage of sorts to protect the vital life line below that needs protection from damage or else the tree dies. This tissue is much like the tissue that evolves around burn victums where by thick blubbery scar tissue develops to protect the baby like new skin where real vital fluid exchange takes place. Many of my clients have suffered burns in house fires and during reconstruction many times a healed wound will begin bleeding at the slightest touch. This could be curtains for a tree.

I showed these pictures to Ted Matson whom I think we can all agree is a very noteable bonsai master around the nation. During our exchange he verified indeed that damage to trunks and branches will take place at the cambilum level in only thousand's of an inch cell tissue to maintain life and fluid/nutrient exchange, while scar tissue (callus) is only a topical bandage.

The Central Valley of California, Bread Basket to the World is full of agriculture. One of my current homes under reconstruction is a Japanese family whose home burned down a few months back. He was a farmer for 62 years. Mostly stone fruits and grapes. I asked him about grafting, and callus tissue.
This was his story and how it realates to bonsai.

Making money in the food growing businesss is very complicated. Many times a farmer will plant a crop that is making money one year only to have it fall out of market the next year. In the case of stone fruits many years of growing to achieve adult crop producing trees may take many years. If a certain fruit begins to decline financially, what can a farmer do? Change to a better stone fruit. How can you invest ten years in growing trees only to pull them out to plant new ones then waste another ten years to get back to where you were?

You don't plant new trees, you graft on a better financially sound tree. In the case of this farmer, he related that when peach trees are planted a farmer can have his choice of grafting on literally any peach, any nectarine or any plum to the peach stump. If a farmer starts with plum as a stump then he can only graft on a new plum or apricot but no peach or nectarine.

So peach is the way to go....

In this first picture we can see peach stumps with new stone fruits grafted on. A large sacrifice leader is left on the stump to keep it alive while the new scions knit. (Just so you know I have already spent most of January and all of February learning his grafting skills and he has said that when he finds his old knives he will give them to me. They are his Fathers from Japan and they are close to 175 years old. I can hardly wait).

In the fourth picture we can see that the grafts have already taken and callus tissue is starting to grow. This callus tissue is growing nearly five taimes faster than the tissue at the cambium intersection at the point of conception for lack of a better term. The nutrient path was the first thing the tree made. in the case of the callus tissue it serves two purposes, one to protect this tender bond, and two to lay down the necessary wood to maintain the bond. At this point wind will tear these off in a heart beat. I know, they lay all around the orchard as testiment to their weakness at this point.

I'm confused, you contend that callus can support the flow of nutrients ...and support that case/argument by citing the use of grafting. I'd thought the callus that forms in grafting is superfluous ...while the cambium is where the nutrients flow. Essentially theres no break in the cambium.

Am I missing something?

Yes! Read the part in red that was in my first post.
 

Smoke

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I think the question is ...

Is anything being transferred to the roots from the foliage via scar tissue.

I have a winged elm, Ulmus alata. It has been strangled at the base with a piece of no. 22 copper wire. It has been allowed to grow over the wire and increase the base size by double. One can see by the bark that it has split and cracked open giving a supreme look of age. The wire is still in the tree about 1/2 inch under.

Tree is 5 inches tall with a 1.5 inch base.

Red line reflects where wire is. You can just see the ridge of the bottom of the callus in the pictures near the moss whithout red lines. I drew the lines on in appx. location.

This tree was documented at bonsaiTALK before crash and I can't find the before pics of the chop. I am still looking.
 

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Smoke

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So what did I learn, s l o w for us rednecks ?

keep it green
Harry

Come on...Try to keep up Harry..I don't have time to chew this cabbage twice:cool:
 

bwaynef

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Smoke said:
The nutrient path was the first thing the tree made.


So why have you spent all this time and shown all these pictures of scars if you're admitting that the nutrients are flowing along the nutrient path (here i'm assuming you're talking about the cambium/xylum/phloem). We all know that nutrients are carried via the cambiums.

There certainly are scars on all the trees you've posted, but since grafting involves lining up cambium (et al) layers (so that essentially there is no break), the scars that are there NEVER block those layers ...so you're not proving that scars pass nutrients.

I'm not sure I'm communicating my point well, but this is the best I can do. Regardless, thanks for your time.
 

Mojosan

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I have been trying to follow all this, and after reading it several times, I have to agree with Wayne.
All that has been demonstrated is that the cambium heals, and is covered with scar tissue. So what has been shown is that the cambium transfers nutrients.
 

grizzlywon

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This thread reminds me that trees have been wonderfully designed to withstand violent environments. You can beat them up and many times, they will, heal themselves and keep on growing as if it never happened and other times they will look like they have been through it (which might be a good thing on bonsai). And sometimes the beatdown will kill them as we all know.

And some find that using wire to scar a tree can give them the results they want, whether on purpose or not (the video and Al's tree). We can stand to learn from each other on this technique. Which is why I posed the video and question to begin with.

Some may think this is a shortcut, while others would site that it is a technique. If we want to definitely state that, "there are no short cuts in bonsai." I think you can make a case that, while there are no fast easy ways to make a tree bonsai overnight, everyone of us on here (if we are not planning on living for 500 years), is looking for any way to speed things up. Like fertilizer!

I have even heard some say that wiring a branch is a "shortcut," or that it is cheating. And they are true if you want to take this to an extreme. "Just use cut and grow and stop being so impatient," one could make the case. (I remember seeing a video I think filmed in China where they guy said they don't wire their trees, they just prune them to shape.)

My thinking is, do whatever works and learn from as many people who have done things you want to do. Books are great, but are regional and seem to many times just regurgitate old information. A great example is that all the air laying techniques I have seen in books don't work as good as a different method a friend (who does it a lot!), showed me.

And any shortcuts that work are a huge blessing that we should take advantage of.
 

HotAction

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When a plant is wounded, it genereates volumes of this undifferentiated tissue. It can then later form into the specialized cells needed for structure, and movement of resources.

Dave

So, The plant realizes it has been injured and starts mass producing cells. Now, it has a stockpile (callus) It will then change the cells into the type that are needed. So, yes callus tissue can generate into the transport system of the plant. I hope that makes sense. Most of the cells generated will of course form into structural cells to give support and "wall off", and play no part in transport.

Dave
 

Smoke

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So why have you spent all this time and shown all these pictures of scars if you're admitting that the nutrients are flowing along the nutrient path (here i'm assuming you're talking about the cambium/xylum/phloem). We all know that nutrients are carried via the cambiums.

There certainly are scars on all the trees you've posted, but since grafting involves lining up cambium (et al) layers (so that essentially there is no break), the scars that are there NEVER block those layers ...so you're not proving that scars pass nutrients.

I'm not sure I'm communicating my point well, but this is the best I can do. Regardless, thanks for your time.

I am trying my best in this post to not seem rude or impatient. But I gotta ask Wayne, do you read these posts or just skim over them and pick out the parts that interest you or disagree with?

Loook at Mark's post above which I linked from the original thread. I am in total agreement with you. I think you need to be taking up better questions with Mr. Rockwell. Mark states:

Wound callus tissue does not transfer nutrients. The rolling wounds are useless to the tree, other than to compartmentalize injury by the wire:
It is not until much later that regular cambium tissue overgrows the callus tissue--possibly decades...If you're too aggressive with this kind of thing, you will kill your tree.

First he says that callus tissue does not carry nutrients. He is right to a point becuase callus wood does not transfer nutrients, the living part does.

The way that a plant regenerates anything is thru callus tissue. The part that is living at the outer edge, ever growing during the building of that rolling wound he speaks of.

let's all use are head here for a minute and think about some of the tricks we use in bonsai and how callus tissue works and how it has to pass nutrients or a plant could never regenerate.

Think about an air layer or ground layer. When a top and bottom cut is made on a living plant, roots will not generate until callus tissue is built. No callus, no roots. when a graft is made, the first thing that generates is callus material. I have learned grafting from some of the best in California, some bonsai guru's and some generational farmers. In almost every case I am told that the first signs of a graft knitting is watching for the sizzle. The sizzle is the callus material oozing out from the graft union, almost the same type material that oozes from a cut on ones own skin. The clear serum and scab making material that begins to sizzle as a wound closes.

Cambium material is cambium material. At no time is that material ever disorganized. From the point of any wound on a tree it is ever viligent to reconnect with itself and heal. As far as killing trees with radical wire...come on this was safe as a baby in Church. What those guys did to those fruit trees in that field was damn risky, yet no pain no gain.

Lets talk about those pines for a moment. Those pines were wired with a spiral wire allowing uninerupted nutrient flow around the tree in the clean areas between the wire. The tree began to die under the wire as it became more restricted. As the vessels between the wire became engorged and grew then swelled over the wire and eventually grafted to itself thus reconnecting the trunk skin into a new totally usefull trunk again.

As far as I can see I have no idea what the process done on on the pines has to do with nutrient flow at all except that Mark made a statement about callus tissue not conducting nutrients. So if anyone is out there in left field you might want to have Mark clarify just what the hell it was he was taking about.

I think I have validated everything I have said with plenty of photo's of trees going on growing and healing with huge masses of scar tissue like nothing is wrong.

What do you say? But first watch the video, read the posts on the original thread, then re-read these again and maybe you will catch up.
 
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Smoke

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Maybe this will be easier. Mark said callus material does not permit the flow of nutrients. I showed trees that have been dead headed. Grafts were placed in a dead headed stump. Grafts took and created huge globs of grotesque callus materail. Said grafts produced fruit.

DID THE NEW GRAFTED ON TOP PASS NUTRIENTS TO THE BOTTOM OF THE TREE THRU SAID CALLUSED AREA?

yes or no question. Obviously the answer is yes!

so end of discussion, thanks for playing.

Al
 
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bwaynef

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I showed trees that have been dead headed. Grafts were placed in a dead headed stump. Grafts took and created huge globs of grotesque callus materail. Said grafts produced fruit.

DID THE NEW GRAFTED ON TOP PASS NUTRIENTS TO THE BOTTOM OF THE TREE THRU SAID CALLUSED AREA?

yes or no question. Obviously the answer is yes!

so end of discussion, thanks for playing.

Al

First, thanks for not seeming rude or impatient. I have followed this thread and the one that inspired it.

As for your question, I'll concede that the graft scenario you've painstakingly described/pictured has nutrients passing in the vicinity of the callused area, but NOT via any CALLUS tissue. The callus tissue may surround the cambium layers, but I'm not sure you've proved the callus in any way obstructs the cambium layers ...or their ability to do what they're designed to do. Grafting involves the lining up of cambium layers ...so my first guess is that the CAMBIUM area had a channel THRU the callus tissue.

Are you saying that its the CALLUS tissue that is passing the nutrients, or that via the loophole of grafting, you're proving that a cambium layer "channel", surrounded by CALLUS tissue, ultimately passes the nutrients ...as it does on all trees.
 
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garywood

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I really only wanted to follow the thread along but I might have something that would further our understatding of callus and physiology. This is an airlayer on a trident that was done in spring of 09. The intention is not to get roots the first year but roots the second year or even the third. The first year is for only building callus and you can see in the photo there is a difference.in size between the top and bottom cuts. I use knob cutters and make a deep cut into old wood. Draw your own conclusions if callus transports. Wood
 

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Smoke

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First, thanks for not seeming rude or impatient. I have followed this thread and the one that inspired it.

As for your question, I'll concede that the graft scenario you've painstakingly described/pictured has nutrients passing in the vicinity of the callused area, but NOT via any CALLUS tissue. The callus tissue may surround the cambium layers, but I'm not sure you've proved the callus in any way obstructs the cambium layers ...or their ability to do what they're designed to do. Grafting involves the lining up of cambium layers ...so my first guess is that the CAMBIUM area had a channel THRU the callus tissue.

Are you saying that its the CALLUS tissue that is passing the nutrients, or that via the loophole of grafting, you're proving that a cambium layer "channel", surrounded by CALLUS tissue, ultimately passes the nutrients ...as it does on all trees.

Wayane..would yiou please throw callus tissue out of this dialog. I have never said that anything passes thru the actual callus tissue. why do you keep coming back to this. the area is callused, but that is not where the nutrient exchange is taking place. please ask you questions to Mark, he is the one that has said callus material does not pass nutrients, then gave some bogus link to a article that never says anything he said it did, infact never talks about nutrient exchange at all. Callus material is immaterial is this debate. It does nothing as far as passing anything.

In fact callus material was not even worth bringing up in the original thread since the pines never really ever made callus material. All they made were engorged lymphatic systems which overgrew the wire and regrafted on the otherside. Not anything like what I have shown with these fruit trees and dead headed grafts ability to pass to the roots via a large mass of scar tissue that has nothing at all to do with the free exchange of nutrients, but is mearly a picture for Mark to see real callus tissue.

Ask Mark to clarify what he said.
 
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