Kurume Azalea

me and my student work on his tree today. we spent about 4 hours working on it. light thining an wiring.
it was repotted in January. we cut it back and thin it before we repotted. we kept a few flowers. it was very pretty.


before


close up of the flower.


after

Howzit Boon,
Very nice.... well done. I love satsuki azaleas!!

-Tim

Hawaiian77 wrote:Howzit Boon,
Very nice.... well done. I love satsuki azaleas!!

-Tim

Thanks, Tim,

Is that a 'Mangetsu'?

William Feldman wrote:Is that a 'Mangetsu'?

i think you are right.

I saw a picture of this tree on Jonas's blog. A beautiful specimen. Thank for sharing, Boon.

Have a great week!!!
Sam

Sam,
Thanks, here it is. from my camera
we thinned out 75% of flower buds in fall. it would have drained the energy too much and the flowers would not be as pretty if we lefrt all the flowers' buds

Glorious!

Russell Coker wrote:

Glorious!

ABSOLUTELY!!!!!

Boon, I've been told to thin the flower buds down to two regardless of whether you're letting the tree flower next year, and then removing the flowers completely early in the spring. Is this accurate? Russell, feel free to chime in as well. I've been told to leave the strongest buds, opposite of pines.

Thanks for posting this other shot.
Have a great week!!!
Sam

Flowers can choke and crowd out each other. Especially on kurume azalea. It's a bit of a taste issue. I personally don't like too many flowers on an azalea. I want to see the silhouette and quite a bit of foliage. Reducing flower buds and removing them completely on some parts of the tree will achieve this.

If you don't want it to flower, why would you remove a few buds first and then the remainder later? Or do you mean cutting the plant back to 2 shoots of new growth?

Azalea grow many new twigs at the base of the flower buds. They can be 5 or 6 new twigs or even more. Keeping them all won't be treelike at all. So as a general shaping rule you can prune back to 2 buds with 2 leaves. It's called 'futame futaba nokoshi'.

http://azaleasplendor.dyndns.info/azalea/archives/2012/04/entry_7.php?show_id=7
http://satsukimania.net/index.php/tips/pruning.html


Also this trunk shows kurume genes in a hybrid don't harm the ability to grow very good trunks for bonsai. It's all about time and having someone who knows how to grow good bonsai trunks grow it.

Sam, if you're going to pull the flowers off you might as well grow a pine!

I've seen that kind of nonsense before. I don't do it now, and in the 3 years I was in Kanuma I was never told to do it, nor did I ever see it done. The only satsuki that weren't allowed to bloom as they pleased were sick/weak ones or those that had a severe root cleaning/transplanting earlier in the season. No one ever handed me a satsuki and said "Pick off all of the buds, it bloomed last year." I remember a friend came to see the trees on display for the Satsuki Festival. He said it was like looking at a bunch of wedding and birthday cakes. Pots, trunks and flowers - that's all.

That was over 20 years ago, maybe things have changed.

Boon

Your azalea is beautiful. Thanks for sharing. I believe that it is a cultivar of Kyushu azalea, Rhododendron kiusianum, not. kurume azalea, Rhododendron obtusum. Checknit out on the internet. It is, however a great plant!

Bill

Kurume are hybrids of kiusianum and kaempferi. Rhododendron obtusum is a big umbrella term for everything related to anything in the wide kiusianum-kaempferi range. It's the splitting and lumping debate of taxonomy and splitting won out so far.
It's indeed true that in this case there's probably no R.kaempferi involved. So kiusianum or miyama tsutusji indeed. I saw one of these up close once and I can convince myself a bit that this is a satsuki x kiusianum hybrid. It's not just a straightforward kiusianum in terms of leaves. But certainly a lot more kiusianum than indicum.

I removed buds of some of my azalea last September, hoping they would grow more. So far I haven't seen it.

I did notice that on kurume-type hybrids new growth would come faster on branches without flowers.

So far I haven't seen the advantage to removing all flowers to benefit doing it since it's kind of a waste. And it's a lot of time. So if you have 1000 trees growing in the ground and hundreds of flower buds on each, I doubt it's worth the money the bit more growth it gives. So no surprise they leave them off.

I have seen people claim that in Japan they only let azalea flower when they are put on show, though.

I'm sorry I wasn't able to respond sooner. I'm glad the conversation went this way and Boon, I'm sorry to hijack your thread.

First I've been told to only flower azaleas once every three years because flowering zaps so much energy from the tree. I've been told that the tree either flowers or grows but not both in the same year. This seems a little fallacious to me, but I'm not experienced enough to know whether this is true or not. There is also some misinformation about whether the hardest part for an azalea is forming the flower bud, or pushing the flower out.

I've also been told that even if you are going to be eventually pulling all the flower buds off, you need to leave two of the strongest flower buds throughout the tree as sap drawers during the winter and then removing them in the spring if the tree needs more development. This way the tree will continue to send signals (sorry if this is not the right word, auxins maybe) to grow from there because the flowers are indicating that growth is needed there. Again I'm not sure if this is right but until this year (with a massive thanks to Russell) I only had 1 azalea and I didn't want to experiment on that tree. I can't wait until next year and the future.

Please feel free to educate me. I'm definitely open to some bonsai schooling.
Stay cool with this crazy heat wave we're having.
Have a great weekend!!!!
Sam

Sam, Sam, Sam...

In all these years I never knew growing azaleas could be so TEDIOUS!!!!!!!!!! I mean, really, who has time for all of that nonsense? You are going to have to decide how you want this to work for YOU. Can any of that hurt? ABSOLUTELY NOT!! Is any of that necessary? ABSOLUTELY NOT!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Kinda reminds me of waking up Christmas morning and instead of opening presents throwing them away - except every third year, of course

Very nice krub, we also have some Azalea here... in Thailand, also local spicie "กุหลาบขาวเชียงดาว" but there are not popular here also because "too much heat"

Is it a native, wild azalea? I'd love to see a picture.

It is Rhododendron ludwigianum according to my google skill.

Russell Coker wrote:


Sam, Sam, Sam...

In all these years I never knew growing azaleas could be so TEDIOUS!!!!!!!!!! I mean, really, who has time for all of that nonsense? You are going to have to decide how you want this to work for YOU. Can any of that hurt? ABSOLUTELY NOT!! Is any of that necessary? ABSOLUTELY NOT!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Kinda reminds me of waking up Christmas morning and instead of opening presents throwing them away - except every third year, of course

Thanks for that info Russell. I really appreciate it. I always felt that it was pretty crappy I couldn't enjoy the flowers from my Nyohozan and now I can. I'll still thin them down though.

Have a great week and a Happy 4th of July everyone!!!!
Sam!!!!

This year I was bit by the azalea bug. This is an example of what I hope to accomplish in the future. Thanks for sharing