accent gastrapod

i was just looking through the latest issue of bonsai focus, on page 15 is a lovely picture of walter palls spruce.
halfway up the trunk is a snail!!! a bit out of scale but nice touch walter!
does this lead to a new debate? creatures that live on bonsai. how big should they be and how should we view them?!?

Many of my trees have a resident lizard.

I haven't seen the picture, but I would be leery of a snail on a bonsai. They can multiply & become deadly, and molluscicides can be toxic to some trees.
Iris

bonsaisr wrote:I haven't seen the picture, but I would be leery of a snail on a bonsai. They can multiply & become deadly, and molluscicides can be toxic to some trees.
Iris

You should come around to my garden in the Summer, just after its rained. I walk out at night time and its crunch, crunch as I walk around. I used to use slug pellets but discovered we have Hedgehogs under the shed. Snails crawl all over my trees and at worst do some leaf pruning or dig a hole to lay eggs. They are rather partial to Euonymous twigs though.

have you got any pics of your lizards billy?

I always have a snail somewhere on my bonsai tables. Jackie sculpted this fellow of soapstone for me more than 45 years ago now, while she was getting her MFA. I have to bring him inside in winter up here because he's developed a crack across his head (other side) and I'm afraid the freeze-thaw cycle will decapitate him.

I had a huge brown snail on one of my trees this summer. I removed it as soon as I saw it. It had put slime all over my tree and had sat itself good in a bend on the trunk.
Good thing my trees are all under the snow now, so I dont have to check them, hehe. Even the tree at a metre is gone.

Al my trees have an inhabitant.
When i remove a leave, wire or prune., i come across them.
I feel i have to apologize because i intrude into their world.
The resident moves up or down depending where my hands are,
he follows interested my proceedings awaiting the time that hand is gone.
The habitants are mostly spiders who i imagine taking care of the tree by removing unwanted visitors.
But then this is also a limited dream, they are quit choosy.
And ah yes that realm of trees and their inhabitants is fiercely ruled by another guy,
but not me mind you - the robin.

Sunip

oakaholic wrote:have you got any pics of your lizards billy?

We have been having, what is for us, a cold winter. I think most of my lizards are in hiding, but I will look.