How long does Japanese Five Needle Pine bark take to mature

I bought a grafted five needle pine but have not collected it from the nursery as yet. The tree is about 60 cm tall and the graft is quite low, the bark on the black pine root stock looks aged while the white pine looks rather juvenile. I do not want to thicken the trunk any further so I'm planning to get rid of a few sacrifice branches and shorten the tree a bit to get rid of a neck at the top of the tree. The trunk is about 6cm thick. Roughly how long might the trunk take to start looking a bit more aged?

James,

ten to twenty years, I am afraid.

Thanks Mr Pall for your prompt reply. This tree must be that age or older, the 6cm trunk size is being very conservative, I did not measure the tree before I left the nursery. Would leaving the sacrifice branches and top intact quicken bark formation. Could this be a variety of white pine with permanently smooth bark?

James,

I meant ten to twenty years from now if it has smooth bark now, altogether forty to fifty years.

Once again thank you Mr Pall.

I have a grafted white pine that is about twenty years old. Still has smooth bark on the white pine top. The black pine root stock has great thick aged bark already. For now I try to hide the smooth bark with foliage as best I can.

This is my grafted JWP. I think it is 30 to 50 years old. Even if you look close you can only see the graft union because you know that it must be there. The bark of JWP after some decades looks very much like that of JBP. As far as I know all you can do is just keep the tree happy for a long time  and see what happens.

Nice tree and nice bark. Incredible blending. Funny my base looks like yours. Above that though is smooth. Here's to the next 20 years.

Walter, are you concerned that with longer age, the JBP stock will be much larger/bulkier than the JWP graft despite the bark looking similar?

Chris,

no, if the graft union looks fine after a couple of decades it will also look fine in the future. If it does not look fine you can bet that this gets worse over time. It has genetic reasons. Good gardeners carefully choose the material for grafts for bonsai purposes. A grafted tree without fault and similar bark is of high value, because the stick out against the other ones.

here is a blog post from earlier in the year about grafted white pine best guess aging JWP blog.

The imported field grown trees are always much younger than you imagine - a black pine trunk in the growing beds will be thicker than your wrist in 7 or 8 years and the white pine variety used these days makes dense pads with clip and grow type pruning in much the same time. once dug up and put in a bonsai pot the trunk girth does not expand very quickly at all so the graft 'step' you have now will not get more noticable in the future. The two bark types will always be different though as the plates and bark thickness on white pine and black are different but once both have texture the union is not so obvious.

weathering helps age the bark too - it is a juggling act to get the very best from the trees as the bottom species JBP does not like dropping too low in winter while the top part JWP needs to get below 0 deg for several weeks - best to dry out the pot in late Autumn and protect the pot and soil while letting the tree face the cold weather - it works here for me but your location may be different

cheers Marcus

Mr. Pall,

Wonderful pine, how long have you been training this tree?

Thank you.

Raymond

nishiki Japanese white pine. Diabolically awful pics. Sorry.