The Tree Thread

[Brian Van Fleet]

Hawthorn, oversized pot for growth...just waiting for the growth...

 

[VAFisher]

My triple trunk Chinzan azalea. This came from nursery stock and I've been working on it for 4 or 5 years now.

 

[SantaFeBonsai]

The zelkova was completely defoliated 13 days ago and a partial for the trident a day later.

 

[jaco94]

Maple

 

[Brian Van Fleet]

Updated shot of the ROR trident maple. Ino pot. Really happy it’s not dead.

 

[erich_raudebaugh]

Updated shot of the ROR trident maple. Ino pot. Really happy it’s not dead.
View attachment 307128

This is a great tree Brian. Based a bit from your progression I'm going to start a ROR trident next spring, I have a rock and several trees to pick from.

I bought this shohin chojubai a few years ago from Bonsai Northwest. They don't carry them usually but were selling someone's collection. I've up-potted every year and it's growing like crazy. It has scarlet flowers.

 

[PiñonJ]

Rocky Mountain Douglas Fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii, var. glauca) I collected a year ago. With new growth, it was over 6' tall. This is the initial structural setting. It will need to lose a lot more foliage, but I took off at least 50%. I did a lot of detail wiring, but not every twig, so it still looks scruffy.

I thought this would be the front:

But, I think the multiple trunks and jins will show better from the opposite side. Still a lot of material to be removed in this tree's future.

 

[fredman]

View attachment 210353

Metrosideros (New Zealand Christmas tree) new growth.

Recognized the leaves immediately
Here's my one in development. Got some air roots forming..

 

[BobbyLane]

Carp again

 

[ihaveaspaceship]

Recognized the leaves immediately
Here's my one in development. Got some air roots forming..
View attachment 307465View attachment 307466

Thats a nice one!, My metrosideros shot out an air root or two in early spring but has since dried up and fell off. Way way too dry out here!


Coast live oak from a garden nursery. Love the bark on this one.

 

[0soyoung]

I am continually fascinated by how radically many tree leaves reduce, pretty much automatically, by simply keeping them small. I was wandering in the forest and grabbed a leaf off a young big leaf maple (acer macrophyllum) and popped my little volunteer on it to illustrate.



I've 'shorta' cheated as all the leaves on my volunteer, except that one in the upper left, are second flush foliage (the leaves I showed before were full season leaves).

My little tree is less than a petiole tall



And still has incredibly short internodes


You may note a pair of remnant red petiole stubs.

Obviously, this contradicts the shallow belief that longer petioles necessarily mean longer internodes.


gawd, I love maples

 

[Forsoothe!]

QUOTE @0soyoung "Obviously, this contradicts the shallow belief that longer petioles necessarily mean longer internodes. "

Outdside of the fact that the Bigleaf is one species and the little leaves are another, I don't think that long internodes automatically mean never reducible. But, the amount of reduction varies widely from species to species and some do not reduce to bonsai standards. Depending upon your standards. The small leaves you show are immature and will likely grow to the same relative length of the ordinary un-reduced leaf to un-reduced petiole relationship. I'd like to see them in September. And I'd like to see you reduce the Bigleaf to whatever that would be. I've said before, many times, that Norway does not reduce much more than 50%, which is still not bonsai.

 

[0soyoung]

QUOTE @0soyoung "Obviously, this contradicts the shallow belief that longer petioles necessarily mean longer internodes. "

Outdside of the fact that the Bigleaf is one species and the little leaves are another, I don't think that long internodes automatically mean never reducible. But, the amount of reduction varies widely from species to species and some do not reduce to bonsai standards. Depending upon your standards. The small leaves you show are immature and will likely grow to the same relative length of the ordinary un-reduced leaf to un-reduced petiole relationship. I'd like to see them in September. And I'd like to see you reduce the Bigleaf to whatever that would be. I've said before, many times, that Norway does not reduce much more than 50%, which is still not bonsai.

#1 I twice linked to a prior post of this same little tree in the same little pot that I posted last fall. As I said, I did not do any defoliation last year and what one sees in that posting in this thread from last fall is the full season of foliage.

#2 You owe a pic to this, "The Tree Thread". Technically, one should post 2 photos to make amends, but Vance always gets off by just posting a pic after being chastized.

#3 A pic of some maples of mine from earlier this year, for the sake of making this post of mine legitimate. The backdrop is an a.p. 'Tsukushigata' landscape planting with a bit of green in the lower left being an acer japonicum 'Green Cascade', also a landscape planting. The white thing is an a.p. 'Ukigumo'. To its left is an a. rubrum just beginning to leaf out. To the immediate right of Uki is some young a. circinatum and hovering over them on the far right is a group of a. platanoides planted on a porcelain floor tile. The top platanoides leaves are as big as they get. I remove those in May and they get replaced with leaves that don't get much bigger than the little ones lower down on the trees - a leaf off the mother tree is almost as large as the entire group (note I've again hyperlinked text - again, click it to see what I'm referring to with the linked words/phrase).



btw, I also have a vine maple landscape planting elsewhere in my landscape. There isn't another with a few hundred yards of it, yet it has been prolifically producing seed that sprout under it over the last several years. I am firmly convinced that self-fertility is extremely rare and have tentatively concluded that the 'Green Cascade' is the pollinator - I've recently learned that a. japonicum and a. circinatum are very, very similar at the DNA level (more surprises!!! )

 

[Forsoothe!]

I missed where you say what the species is of the little guy. Is this Bigleaf the same scale as yours?

Here's a Mountain Laurel that's probably a dwarf, but I don't remember the name or when I got it. I had a few in the yard and they died, one by one, and this is the last one, but it seems happy in a pot and small enough to protect from my winters. It will be wired after the blooms fade.

 

[Forsoothe!]

I once had a Trident that I bought from a guy who didn't even know what it was. It had a nice, interesting ~12" trunk and leaves that looked like they were tetraploid, but I still have never heard of a Trident like that. Anyway, I had it maybe ten years and it wouldn't branch. There was a cluster, for lack of a better term, of foliage at the crown and every year it would be about the same. Healthy looking, but no branches to speak of. Finally, I stopped pruning it at all because I thought I was doing something wrong. After 3 years I sold it and never looked back.

Here's one of @cmeg1 Zelkova seedlings that I believe is closing in on one year old. How do like them apples?

 

[0soyoung]

I missed where you say what the species is of the little guy. Is this Bigleaf the same scale as yours?
View attachment 308166

Yes.


Species ID might still be challenged, because I found it as a volunteer in my garden, not from seed. But it does check most, if not all, of the boxes. @parhamr vouched for it, based on his collected young specimens. A. macrophyllum is indigenous and quite common on this island.

In compliance with the thread rule, a small mountain ash --> . Likely from a neighbor's landscape tree.

 

[Forsoothe!]

I asking what the one with the short internodes is.

Here's a Cuban Mahogany forest I collected as saplings from a park on Marco Island in 2006. Leaf pruned today.

 

[Tentakelaertje]

Squamata meyeri juniper, another little step on the way to bonsai. I hope it fills out quickly as I'm very excited to work on it.

 

[BobbyLane]

Zelkova...

 

[Starfox]

Some new shoes for the Callistemon.