Olea Europaea Carnivorous

[John P.]

This will document what someday I hope to be a worthy (albeit blatant) ripoff of @moke ‘s Ulmus Pumila Carnivorous tree.

Rather than using a Siberian Elm, I’m using a small-ish fruiting olive stump from a seller that I’ve been very happy with before.

As received yesterday:


Getting his arms situated:


A little wire:



Now a lot of feeding and pinching ...

 

[Brian Van Fleet]

Nice, got one from them last year too.

 

[moke]

Awesome, can’t wait to see what you do with it.
Looks like a great start!!!

 

[John P.]

Looks like my scary tree is going to have a nose ...

 

[John P.]

I attempted to wire the “nose” pictured above soon after I last posted. I knew to wait until it lignified a bit, but was hasty. Let’s just say its nose fell off and strike it up to lessons ignored and relearned.

Good thing it’s an olive and it regrew another one.

Here’s OEC today ... getting some decent elongation on the arms.



Wired the nose down a bit after waiting for some “wood“ to appear:

I will let the arms continue to run and grow until I pot it up in late July or early August.

Interesting forked leaf in the middle:

 

[John P.]

Glad to see another “scary tree” thread pop up—this time from @BobbyLane :

Carpinus B, 'Edna'

It reminded me that I haven’t updated this thread in a while. From today ...

Arms have elongated a bit:

Its nose has grown, too. Must be telling lies:

Finally got a bud in a good place for a tail—been waiting a while for this:

Here’s its planned face, subject to change (and also subject to my carving abilities):

 

[BobbyLane]

You got some growing to do with this though, lots of feed n water in summer.

 

[John P.]

Not a ton of growth. I could’ve been better about feeding over the summer.


I’ll let the nose get a little thicker and more woody before I cut and apply jin goop:

Arms are a bit thicker:

Tail is coming along nicely:

 

[John P.]

Given that Halloween is approaching, I thought I’d post progress pictures of this guy. I’ve been pretty deficient with my trees this year, so there’s no rapid transformation in store. The tail has thickened the most. It may be time to slow down the nose and tail, and focus more growth on the arms.