LG Large Kotohime

[BobbyLane]

when i saw this, it reminded me of something i have in my files

this tree is a little more grounded though, the low branch has likely rooted into the soil. something i may try to emulate one day, with the right material. not sayin its what you should do though! just sharing my thoughts!

the tree tells a story, it was obviously upright at some point and suffered some type of trauma to push it way over on its side.

 

[Lars Grimm]

I forgot to mention that I would air layer any heavy branches which are to be removed from the large Koto Hime maple. Should only take a few months and can be removed before winter. Air layer in April/May and remove in July/August.

It would be wasting nicely shaped branches which could be trained into stunning bonsai.

I'll definitely not want to let any of these nice branches go to waste. Any tips on ground layering to improve the nebari? I've only done a couple and have treated them like a normal air layer in terms of timing and substrate. I think the challenge will be determining the correct level and working with the irregular surface caused by the individual thicker roots currently in place above the soil line.

 

[bwaynef]

@Lars Grimm I'm glad you got this one. Another vendor mentioned he thought he'd sold one of his maples to you but you chose otherwise. (I imagine the tree in this post is why.) I was able to bring the other home with me.

 

[Lars Grimm]

I wanted to wait to repot this until later this month or next month, but it started to push out some shoots. I am still very much on the fence regarding the best design for this tree, but I really love the natural movement of the lowest branch. This branch moves toward the viewer if it is positioned with a rightward orientation.

When I started to work on the root ball, I realized there was a much greater task ahead of me than I expected. There was still a lot of residual heavy clay soil underneath the root mass. I opted to take things slower as a result. I removed some heavy lower roots and crossing roots that I couldn't shift and was able to screw the tree onto a board. Currently, the basal flare is quite wide, but there are big gaps which I may be able to bridge with root grafts in the future. Doing a ground layer would still be very hard so I might end up working with the existing structure and try to fill in the gaps. In Andrea Meriggoli's book, he shows an example of filling some gaps in the root base with epoxy and then growing over the site. This might be a good option for this tree. Field grown material like this really poses some unique challenges.

 

[Hack Yeah!]

@Lars Grimm , been a couple of years, how's this one looking?

 

[Lars Grimm]

@Lars Grimm , been a couple of years, how's this one looking?

It's looking really good. My primary goal was to acclimate it to a box, which was successful. I've really been struggling with what to do with the base. I've tried a couple rounds of approach and thread grafting new roots, but have not been very successful. I'm still undecided about whether to keep trying to root graft or leave it as is. This year I am going to focus on some branch selection. I'll try to get some good pictures soon.

 

[Hack Yeah!]

That base is pretty funky. This may be crazy but maybe you could layer a small branch or 3? To fill in some of your gaps. Choose appropriately thick ones that you could smash in by cutting the layer down to where an appropriate side branch could maintain the roots and grow until it fuses? You could also possibly fill the base voids with concrete and start treating the roots like a hollow you want to fill? Either way it's a beautiful tree as is, I'm sure you're enjoying working with it. Don't mind my rambling

 

[Lars Grimm]

That base is pretty funky. This may be crazy but maybe you could layer a small branch or 3? To fill in some of your gaps. Choose appropriately thick ones that you could smash in by cutting the layer down to where an appropriate side branch could maintain the roots and grow until it fuses? You could also possibly fill the base voids with concrete and start treating the roots like a hollow you want to fill? Either way it's a beautiful tree as is, I'm sure you're enjoying working with it. Don't mind my rambling

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I've seriously considered the concrete. It feels so permanent though that I was trying to see if I could have better luck with just the grafts.