Japanese Elm Seeds?
- Thread starter chriscannady
- Start date
chriscannady
Seed
I totally agree, I think I was just so anxious to get into this hobby I bought some seeds thinking it would be a good Idea. I still will try growing them , but I will for sure be joining a club ( Already Have ) and I will for sure be getting an older tree to work on!
Thanks everyone for the advise its been very very helpfull !
grouper52
Masterpiece
That's correct, rockm. Let me just quote two salient sections of the book.
The first quote contains the opening paragraphs of the chapter, "Pete's Peak and Pete's Bog," from the middle section of the book, called The Main Trunk, which contains contemporary stories of Dan's approaches to collecting and styling trees:
A balmy fall afternoon. The 2 PM ferry from Port Angeles docks in Victoria. Dan’s been napping on the trip over. The ocean doesn’t interest him: no trees.
He plans to drive up the highway that hugs the eastern coast of Vancouver Island along the Inside Passage, hoping to rendezvous this evening with his collecting buddy, George Heffelfinger, in a small town named Duncan. From there they will head north in Dan’s truck to collect wild trees.
Not far from the ferry, the Victoria rush hour traffic creeps past the Royal BC Museum, a stately building where Dan recalls gaining a key insight years before. The museum had a diorama at that time showing a large Red alder, a local tree. The sign explained that the tree had produced hundreds of thousands of seedlings in its lifetime, but that only two had survived to twenty years of age. The brutal reality of those odds was not lost on Dan. He has told this story countless times since, trying to convince bonsai newcomers that starting with seeds or seedlings is a frustrating, demoralizing proposition that can crush their budding enthusiasm. He encourages them to start with more mature trees, already at least twenty years old. Such older trees are not only immediately more attractive as bonsai, but they have also proven themselves as survivors. Collected, ancient, wild trees, like the ones he’s after on this trip, are ideal.
The second extended quotation is from the chapter, "Creating Elandan" in the first, biographical section of the book, Roots. The quote describes one of the factors that influenced Dan to create Elandan Gardens, his seven acre public bonsai garden. My own writing occupies the first two paragraphs, then there is a five paragraph quote from Dan:
But by 1980 the PSBA [Puget Sound Bonsai Association] membership had peaked at four hundred members. Thereafter it declined. . . .
These declining numbers resonated with Dan’s experiences giving demonstrations around the world: the responses to his demos, often encouraging at the time, seldom led to any true progress or even sustained enthusiasm among those who had attended. Inspired for the moment, they would then go back to their clubs, where they would fail to be further stimulated. Over time, as have others, Dan began to wonder if clubs and demonstrations were the best way to teach and nurture an upcoming generation. Of all the people who had come to bonsai through PSBA, it dismayed Dan that the club had not produced a single eagle, not a single person who just took off and soared in the art. He began to wonder if a bonsai school, an academy, was perhaps a better idea.
“I just don’t know that clubs really work. I think they’re a nice place to share similar passions, but we presumed therefore that clubs can nurture along and turn out eagles in this art form. I no longer believe that they can.
“Look how we put bonsai forward, offering this fabulous art for almost no money, as if it’s practically free. It starts when some poor guy goes to a bonsai show and sees great trees. He’s excited. It engenders in him a passion for great trees - he wants great stuff! At the show they have this sign-up list for $20 classes put on by the local club. He signs up. He’s excited. So he goes to the class, and he comes home with this pathetic little tree, and the promise that if he does this and this and this to it every year for the next twenty or two hundred years then it might look impressive.
“A dinky little tree - which you’ve still got to care for as much as a big one - is really hard to get excited about. So he might have been an eagle in the art, but he has just flown the coop, so to speak.
“But if that beginning workshop costs $500, and you come home with something significant, something worthy of being in the show that coming spring, that might capture some people who can afford this hobby. Everything about our process seems in error, a failure to engender in the curiosity seeker any true sense of satisfaction. You’ve got to capture that moment of curiosity, and deliver satisfaction - not the promise of tomorrow.
" . . . You’ve got to get into large trunk size: those are the trees at a show that will elicit a ‘Wow!’, that will inspire someone to really dive into this hobby.”
I hope that helps flesh out Dan's thoughts about the effects that starting with seeds and seedlings and such can have on the enthusiasm of beginners. Maybe it might help spark some book sales as well: 292 pages of this sort of accumulated bonsai wisdom illustrated with several hundred stunning photos: you can't go wrong!
Smoke
Ignore-Amus
Apples and oranges my friends. Makes for good reading though. How many Dan Robinsons are possible in the world? How many will be in the right place at the right time with the time and money available to do what he did. Even if they want to. Hell, I want to! Ain't gonna happen.
To equate the feelings of Dan Robinson to a guy starting out and wishing to start seed is kinda silly. There are countless threads here about usuing kitty litter as soil, oil dry, stripping insulation off of house wiring, annealing ones own copper, making pots that look like sixth grader ash trays, come on.
This hobby will always be about haves and havenots. This is the pecking order of life. Some have the means to buy 700.00 trees and some have the means to only affford a 7.00 dollar pot to grow seeds in. I tried to raise the bar in my own clubs I belong to and I have yet to have anyone ever try a proven process I have demonstrated. To each his own...no use tryin to make it so.
rockm
Spuds Moyogi
"This hobby will always be about haves and havenots. This is the pecking order of life. Some have the means to buy 700.00 trees and some have the means to only affford a 7.00 dollar pot to grow seeds in. I tried to raise the bar in my own clubs I belong to and I have yet to have anyone ever try a proven process I have demonstrated. To each his own...no use tryin to make it so. "
Not really. It is more about the "have the gumption to not invest in 25 seedlings or saplings and spend that money on ONE bigger, older tree." The notion of investing $700 in a beginner tree is ridiculous. However investing $70 in a larger trunked nursery sapling, or even a collected Ponderosa pine (yeah, they're available--check out Golden Arrow) is well within the reach of the "have nots" if they spend their money wisely. What Dan is talking about is not really buying exhorbitant, mostly unattainable, trees, but buying something that's not a spindly--or even non-existent in the case of seeds--mostly unworkable tree.
It is very hard thing for beginners to learn, but certainly not undoable. Once someone HAS worked with an older tree, I've seen them wonder why they ever bothered with seeds, seedlings, cuttings, ect.
Not really. It is more about the "have the gumption to not invest in 25 seedlings or saplings and spend that money on ONE bigger, older tree." The notion of investing $700 in a beginner tree is ridiculous. However investing $70 in a larger trunked nursery sapling, or even a collected Ponderosa pine (yeah, they're available--check out Golden Arrow) is well within the reach of the "have nots" if they spend their money wisely. What Dan is talking about is not really buying exhorbitant, mostly unattainable, trees, but buying something that's not a spindly--or even non-existent in the case of seeds--mostly unworkable tree.
It is very hard thing for beginners to learn, but certainly not undoable. Once someone HAS worked with an older tree, I've seen them wonder why they ever bothered with seeds, seedlings, cuttings, ect.
Brian Van Fleet
Pretty Fly for a Bonsai Guy
100% true, but it's a very tough sell to SO many. You see it time and time again in the clubs; just when you think somebody has turned that corner, in they come with Serissa in a 4" pot.
rockm
Spuds Moyogi
It's not really a corner that is turned--but it can be. It is more of an accelerated appreciation for what is worthwhile and what is not. It is sometimes gradual, sometimes someone has a "Eureka" moment.
I have seen appreciation happen over a period of year, months, or even weeks. It usually grow faster when people see what can be done with better stock first-hand. It took me several years before I realized I was mostly wasting my time with seedlings and cheap stuff. I also realized that if I stopped making upfront commitments to air layers, hundreds of seedlings and the like and simply saved up for a $50 or $100 stock tree, my money and time were better spent.
Some people get it, others don't, for a variety of reasons. I try to combat the notion that bragging about getting a tree for $4 doesn't make it a good buy; that air layering is mostly a waste of time --unless you're air layering something worthwhile and not just trying to "get two trees for the price of one;" that big bonsai are not grown from small bonsai; that seedlings are not bonsai and won't be for a decade...
There will, however, always be a contingent of people who are more in love with the price of the tree than in the tree itself--and this is on BOTH the high end and low end...
I have seen appreciation happen over a period of year, months, or even weeks. It usually grow faster when people see what can be done with better stock first-hand. It took me several years before I realized I was mostly wasting my time with seedlings and cheap stuff. I also realized that if I stopped making upfront commitments to air layers, hundreds of seedlings and the like and simply saved up for a $50 or $100 stock tree, my money and time were better spent.
Some people get it, others don't, for a variety of reasons. I try to combat the notion that bragging about getting a tree for $4 doesn't make it a good buy; that air layering is mostly a waste of time --unless you're air layering something worthwhile and not just trying to "get two trees for the price of one;" that big bonsai are not grown from small bonsai; that seedlings are not bonsai and won't be for a decade...
There will, however, always be a contingent of people who are more in love with the price of the tree than in the tree itself--and this is on BOTH the high end and low end...
Smoke
Ignore-Amus
Mark, your comparing two different things. I'm arguing for "the way it is" and your aguing for "what it could be". You can't compare the two. You could move this dicussion to the karaoke bar and it would be no different than trying to convince Chub that socialism doesn't work.
You and I see the difference but due to whatever circumstances in our life happened to make a paradighm shift possible has to happen for this guy also.
How does that go about teaching a guy to fish by leading him to water....err... bringing the mountain to Moab.... err....something like that....?
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grouper52
Masterpiece
For those who have read the book, I'm sure it's clear that Dan Robinson did not come from wealth, and that he worked extremely hard from a very young age for what he wanted, and that it was only very far along into his life that he ever paid much of anything for a tree - and still seldom does.
It's also worth noting that Dan did grow a great many of his best trees from seeds, particularly the jar of Korean Red and Black pine seeds he brought back with him after his tour in the Army. But during the 50 years those were developing into something worthwhile, he was collecting trees from the wild or in urban areas, or acquiring suitable nursery material.
Personally, if someone knows what's ahead of them when they start with a seed or a stick in a pot, and they want to do it anyway, then more power to them. But if they are a beginner and don't know what lies ahead, I think it's worthwhile educating them about the realities of this hobby.
It's also worth noting that Dan did grow a great many of his best trees from seeds, particularly the jar of Korean Red and Black pine seeds he brought back with him after his tour in the Army. But during the 50 years those were developing into something worthwhile, he was collecting trees from the wild or in urban areas, or acquiring suitable nursery material.
Personally, if someone knows what's ahead of them when they start with a seed or a stick in a pot, and they want to do it anyway, then more power to them. But if they are a beginner and don't know what lies ahead, I think it's worthwhile educating them about the realities of this hobby.
Brian Van Fleet
Pretty Fly for a Bonsai Guy
I would not be stepping out on a limb too far to say that the vast majority of newbies who start with a SIAP have NO idea what lies ahead.
Nothing wrong starting with a stick...it just doesn't belong in a pot.
Nothing wrong starting with a stick...it just doesn't belong in a pot.
serpentsgarden
Sapling
I germinate lots of seeds every year now. Most get sold off to nursery people for stock to replenish benches. But many i try to keep. I have a lot of solid ways to get japanese maples. some varieties of pines and all non statifying seed types. I have to agree about oregon. I coudl very easily see a hoop house outdoors that woudl produce a perfect environment for these hard to cultivate trees. The biggest adavantage and perhaps only is you can see the genetics of the tree at a young age and select better canidates based on natural internade placements growth habits etc. The down side is you will be waitign 10 to 15 years for your seeds to grow into forms you desire. I woudl look into pre grown nursery stock. Some of the trees that down sell well at the end of a year can be air layerd down easily the next spring and you have a good mature piece to begin sculpting. Elms maples and most sugary sap type trees air layer easy. I have not had much lose throught air layering on maples at all. Crab apples seem to root themselves after a bud burst. but you also get the satisfaction of the hard work you put in to the plant since birth.... Making that much mroe your bonsai.
Smoke
Ignore-Amus
grouper52
Masterpiece
I agree, Al. Dan's got two of Mama Yamaguchi's Awagi pines in his collection. You're lucky to have them as well. Gorgeous trees.
