Willow #1 (~ Daygan)

[daygan]

I had the opportunity to collect a willow tree today. I'm not sure exactly what species it is, but it's definitely willow, so I'm relatively certain that it will do well with regenerating roots just sitting in a pan of water. It had been growing between brick tiles on the ground and was actually very easy to remove after I got the bricks loose - I just chopped off the small tap root and it was free. It also has a good number of fine feeder roots that were growing on the surface of the bricks which will be very useful in its recovery.

Main Trunk diameter: oblong, measuring later - something like the length of my forearm.
Height: not important. It'll all be shortened later anyway.
Immediate plan: Let it grow. Figure out which branch I want to become my main trunk and which branches I want to get rid of.

First, a picture of the tree before it was collected and a view of the tiles from between which it was removed.

The root that had been squeezed between the bricks - the pictures are dark but I think you can make out how wide and narrow it is just below the base of the tree:

After I sawed off the extraneous root area, and a hand and arm for perspective:

This will be fun for me to develop. It's got a really nice base, I just need to figure out which branch I want to keep and make into the main trunk... I suppose the thickest branch would make the most sense, because the taper from base to main trunk would be less dramatic and more credible... Suggestions are certainly welcome!

 

[Gene Deci]

Very interesting and intriguing. If you get the roots you want it could be a nice, natural style willow. Let us know

 

[daygan]

Did some sketch work last night. At the moment, I can see two possible directions that I'd be interested in taking with this tree. See below

 

[Gene Deci]

Nice visioning on both designs. I think material you can make a triple out of is harder to find so I might go in that direction.

 

[JudyB]

I agree with Gene, nice job Daygan. I like the triple better all the way around...

 

[daygan]

Day 5: Yeah, getting this tree to produce roots is not going to be a problem. (yes, that's all new growth)

 

[daygan]

This tree is growing really well now. I came back to Tianjin, which is where this tree is, today, to discover that every major branch now has leaves on it, whereas when I left, a couple weeks ago, only one branch had a couple buds poking through, and all of the original foliage had dried up. The picture's colors have been modified slightly to bleach out the background and lighten up the shadowy foreground colors of the tree so that it can be seen a bit more clearly. Also, there's a nice mat of roots growing at the base. I've put diatomite into the pot now and will probably saw some drainage holes into it later tonight to start draining water out.

 

[daygan]

I removed the suckers on the tree along with all of the shoots that had dried up since collecting. I'm considering chopping the main branches back to new leaders now (as each branch has a great many new shoots). Would this be a safe thing to do at this point, considering this tree's current state and the fact that it was collected only a month ago?

 

[Gene Deci]

It is coming along nicely but I would recommend being patient for now. It would be a shame if you cut it back and it suffered additional die-back over the winter. In my experience, if that is going to happen, the first year is most likely.

 

[daygan]

Thank you, Gene Deci, for your experienced advice. I'll leave it alone for this year, then

 

[daygan]

I realized this morning that minimal dieback of a few very fine branches was turning into a greater loss of a couple somewhat thicker branches, so I looked up how winter temperatures affect willow and realized that in fact temperatures of -3 C and lower can frequently cause dieback (we're down to -5 / -6 at nights lately), so I decided to move this tree to a more protected area. Took the opportunity to take a few photos:

 

[JudyB]

I'll be impressive for sure, at least dieback doesn't slow willow down very much at the stage you're at with it.

 

[daygan]

A visual representation of what this could become:

 

[Si Nguyen]

Very cool stump! I like it where you are going with it.
Good luck!

 

[daygan]

This morning I noticed that buds were bright green on the tips of several of the branches and many were even starting to open, so I decided to repot this one. I teased out the roots and then pruned back, then cut back on the excess branch stubs leftover from last year. I also removed all extra branchlets except for one leader for each sub-trunk. Below are before and after pictures of the root pruning as well as a picture of this tree's new post-chop form. I'll re-cut those chops at better angles later this year when things are growing more vigorously. There are two sub-trunks on the left the branchlets of which were lost to die-back over the winter, and I'm hoping they will form new adventitious buds as growth progresses this spring so that I can incorporate them all into the final design.