Large elm cutting

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Hello everyone.
Just wanted to know what is the largest cutting that you were able to grow?
There's a video on Youtube of large thick branches being cut off of an Elm and turned into trees by simply cutting the branch, removing the foliage planting the branch in bonsai mix, keeping it wet but not soaked and a couple of months later you got yourself an adult looking tree.
This is the video www.youtube.com/watch?v=TS9F81cYhzo it's in spanish though. There's a second video showing the results.
 

Anthony

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Steven,

thanks for that,
Just in case you didn't know you can grow elms from root
cutting very easily as well.

Also if you take a root cutting and give it container at
1/3 55 US gallon size, you will get a very fat trunk in under
6 months.

Root cuttings can often have more personality than normal
branch cuttings.
Good Day
Anthony

Root cutting, working on branchlets

elm 2 8.8.18.JPG
 
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Do you think this will work with a Trident Maple? , both root and branch cutting?
 

BobbyLane

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this is a large hornbeam cutting i took this spring, its still growing, time will tell,
27655338_1619234771474891_3202822314727502862_n by Bobby Lane, on Flickr

this was chopped at red line, the top and bottom bits went in the ground, the lower section that had the roots didnt make it,
20180621_151752 by Bobby Lane, on Flickr
20180621_151825 by Bobby Lane, on Flickr
20180621_151916 by Bobby Lane, on Flickr

this is a trident cutting that rooted, the cutting was taken from this tree, it was chopped around half way up
2016-10-24_05-28-54 by Bobby Lane, on Flickr
20161024_171058 by Bobby Lane, on Flickr
2016-12-15_04-28-08 by Bobby Lane, on Flickr
20170301_143903 by Bobby Lane, on Flickr
20170301_143912 by Bobby Lane, on Flickr
20170301_144145 by Bobby Lane, on Flickr

went on a tile and planted in the ground
20170301_145429 by Bobby Lane, on Flickr
20170301_145452 by Bobby Lane, on Flickr
20170810_145210 by Bobby Lane, on Flickr
20170810_145149 by Bobby Lane, on Flickr


could of been a special trident raft, but it didnt survive the UK winter
2018-02-22_12-26-02 by Bobby Lane, on Flickr
 

BrianBay9

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I've struck large cuttings from Ficus microcarpa, but the biggest were an olive and a coral tree (Erythrina), each about 6 inches across. These are all way easier to start from large cuttings than most deciduous trees.
 

Soldano666

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No pics yet. But heavy new growth off 1.5 inch siberian elm branches struck this spring.. I have high hopes
 

Jzack605

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I’m struggling with cuttings. Just recently tried a Siberian elm from cuttings, small diameter. They’re about a month old now, 5/10 still have green leaves and “alive” but when I lived one out of soil there was no root development whatsoever. They were dipped in rooting horomone but my lackluster success leaves me feeling that the horomone does nothing. Any advice?
 

Mike Hennigan

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I’m struggling with cuttings. Just recently tried a Siberian elm from cuttings, small diameter. They’re about a month old now, 5/10 still have green leaves and “alive” but when I lived one out of soil there was no root development whatsoever. They were dipped in rooting horomone but my lackluster success leaves me feeling that the horomone does nothing. Any advice?

Humidity, lots of moisture. If you haven’t done this usually placing the pot of cuttings into a a sealed plastic bag of some kind or a humidity dome. Elms respond very well to this.
 

Mike Hennigan

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This is an elm branch that I tried to airlayer last spring, spring 2017. Not actually sure which species. Maybe I scraped too much of the xylem off, but while I was removing the bark I noticed some rot on one side of it. Basically the air layer was on for only a month and a half when a windstorm broke the branch off of the tree completely! I was not super psyched about this obviously. When I opened up the plastic and sorted through the moss I found NO ROOTS had formed whatsoever. All I could find were two minuscule nubs that were the start of roots, each of these was about the size of of the head of a pin. The logical thing to do was to toss the branch on the compost pile.

But I had a hunch, I decided to take the branch home, saw off the bulk of it (to make the chop for the appropriate size) stick it in a nursery pot with %100 perlite and then put the tree and pot into a black garbage bag and tie the garbage bag shut. I then put the tree-in-garbage-bag into full sun. This was around the first week of June.

This is a technique i’ve used with collected hawthorns to force dormant buds to pop and to get explosive root growth. Horticulturalist call it “sweating”. Tony Tickle uses this for collecting hawthorn. The idea behind sealing a tree inside a black bag and putting into full sun is that the intense heat and %100 humidity forces the tree into root and shoot overdive. You will often find that roots start growing out of the trunk way above the soil line.

I basically turned this failed airlayer into a giant cutting, it’s about 3 inches across at the base. Unfortunately I didn’t take any pics before I potted it up.
BB6B838C-AE83-45B5-81AC-D837BD6800ED.jpeg
“Aerial” roots forming above the soil...
EE484F3D-9026-492B-BEC5-69D7C1B61E71.jpeg
CFE73396-E529-4575-BBE6-432CCCBEF86B.jpeg

And here comes the foliage...86BC75C7-B0BE-4CF6-8482-2F1F86EE3AB9.jpeg
A59FCB8C-FCF3-4DE3-8262-C0710462BE7B.jpeg

From this happy accident and incidental experiment, I am convinced it is possible to take very large elm cuttings, something like 6 inches across or maybe more, if it is done at the right time of year and the black bag sweating technique is applied. I will be performing some more experiments to see how far I can push this next spring. I will try to find a large elm branch, saw it off, and apply this same technique to see how it reacts
.BB6B838C-AE83-45B5-81AC-D837BD6800ED.jpegEE484F3D-9026-492B-BEC5-69D7C1B61E71.jpegCFE73396-E529-4575-BBE6-432CCCBEF86B.jpeg86BC75C7-B0BE-4CF6-8482-2F1F86EE3AB9.jpegA59FCB8C-FCF3-4DE3-8262-C0710462BE7B.jpeg
 

just.wing.it

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This is an elm branch that I tried to airlayer last spring, spring 2017. Not actually sure which species. Maybe I scraped too much of the xylem off, but while I was removing the bark I noticed some rot on one side of it. Basically the air layer was on for only a month and a half when a windstorm broke the branch off of the tree completely! I was not super psyched about this obviously. When I opened up the plastic and sorted through the moss I found NO ROOTS had formed whatsoever. All I could find were two minuscule nubs that were the start of roots, each of these was about the size of of the head of a pin. The logical thing to do was to toss the branch on the compost pile.

But I had a hunch, I decided to take the branch home, saw off the bulk of it (to make the chop for the appropriate size) stick it in a nursery pot with %100 perlite and then put the tree and pot into a black garbage bag and tie the garbage bag shut. I then put the tree-in-garbage-bag into full sun. This was around the first week of June.

This is a technique i’ve used with collected hawthorns to force dormant buds to pop and to get explosive root growth. Horticulturalist call it “sweating”. Tony Tickle uses this for collecting hawthorn. The idea behind sealing a tree inside a black bag and putting into full sun is that the intense heat and %100 humidity forces the tree into root and shoot overdive. You will often find that roots start growing out of the trunk way above the soil line.

I basically turned this failed airlayer into a giant cutting, it’s about 3 inches across at the base. Unfortunately I didn’t take any pics before I potted it up.
View attachment 208339
“Aerial” roots forming above the soil...
View attachment 208340
View attachment 208341

And here comes the foliage...View attachment 208342
View attachment 208343

From this happy accident and incidental experiment, I am convinced it is possible to take very large elm cuttings, something like 6 inches across or maybe more, if it is done at the right time of year and the black bag sweating technique is applied. I will be performing some more experiments to see how far I can push this next spring. I will try to find a large elm branch, saw it off, and apply this same technique to see how it reacts
.View attachment 208339View attachment 208340View attachment 208341View attachment 208342View attachment 208343
That's awesome!
Interesting bark on that elm...do you know the type?
 

Mike Hennigan

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That's awesome!
Interesting bark on that elm...do you know the type?

I’m not sure to be honest, the matured bark on the the mother tree is pretty furrowed, looks totally different from the younger bark here. I thought maybe it was a slippery elm, but when I delved deeper into identifying all the elms i’ve collected I feel like i’m Just more confused. The differences between a lot of elm species seems so minute.
 

Cosmos

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The leaves + immature bark makes me think Siberian elm. The leaves are narrower/more elongated than American elm leaves, and much, much smaller.
 

Mike Hennigan

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The leaves + immature bark makes me think Siberian elm. The leaves are narrower/more elongated than American elm leaves, and much, much smaller.

Yes the leaves are way too small (on the full grown tree) to possibly be American Elm. Thank you for pointing me in the direction of Siberian Elm, I think that has got to be it! I guess I didn’t realize how widely they were planted in cities after the demise of the American Elms, so I didn’t look into this species as an option. After looking up some identification info I am 99% sure it’s a Siberian elm.
 

Cosmos

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Yes the leaves are way too small (on the full grown tree) to possibly be American Elm. Thank you for pointing me in the direction of Siberian Elm, I think that has got to be it! I guess I didn’t realize how widely they were planted in cities after the demise of the American Elms, so I didn’t look into this species as an option. After looking up some identification info I am 99% sure it’s a Siberian elm.

They have a bad rep as bonsai, AFAIK, mostly because they tend to abandon branches with no reason, pioneer species and all. Around here, they grow fast and in the most impossible places. They were planted as hedging material decades ago but have gone feral since that time.

I collected one this spring. It is a big happy ball of green right now.
 

LIukah

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Mine is a one inch birch tree.
 
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