Let's do the twist! or Can you contorta?

[RKatzin]

They're wild, they're weird, maybe that's why I love 'em. I've had this Ponceris trifoliate contorta aka Flying Dragon about ten years now. As near as I can figure the tree is about thirty years old, grown from a tube start from Forest Farm. It's just beginning to set leaf and I gave it a pretty good cutting back today. That's the only way to train them, no wires needed. I left it carry on for two years and it gets pretty messy.

 

[RKatzin]

My only other one is a Snakethorn, aka, Cratagus monogyna flexuosa or Contorted Hawthorn. I haven't done anything except let it grow. It's a grafted cutting so I want to take cuttings for a Hawthorn forest planting

 

[Leo in N E Illinois]

Take a bunch of cuttings from the Ponceris, and make a fantasy horror nightmare forest. Great idea, but cuttings will need 20+ years to trunk up to be true horrors. Fun thought.

 

[petegreg]

Poncirus trifoliata is one of best bonsai candidates from Citrus family, Pretty winter hardy it's used as a rootstock for different citrus species here. Nothing unusual to find one growing in the ground in 6a. Never seen a contorted one, interesting things you've got there...so wire free.
I 've got only contorted Corylus avelana, just beeing air-layered because the graft is on a tall straight trunk (for landscape use).