Tyre grown Celtis trunks

Hi everyone, I've not posted in a while, but I have been looking around the forum periodically.

I have a few small Celtis africana that I planted in tyres, on top of heavy clay soil some time ago. It's spring here now and I have started to dig some trees and getting them into big training pots. Some might go back into the ground again at some time. I am possibly relocating so I thought I might as well lift as many as I can now.

I'll dig up some pics of when I planted them and take some to show what they look like now. I aimed for variety, trying for different looks with different trunks.

So far I have noticed that with trunks I fiddled with, resulting in many branches and growth points, it resulted in quite even root growth, with many roots thickening. In trunks I chopped and let just a leader grow, the tenancy was for a few roots to grow a lot.

Overall the root growth was exceptional, too exceptional, with many roots growing a bit too thick for my taste.

I'll start with this one:


In the ground for 5 years, chopped 3 times, spiral shaped.

Roots got a bit thick.

Next one:



I left it as is and after two years it had made a huge bush, by far the fastest grower of the bunch. The trunk thickened a lot.
I then chopped it low down, bending up a branch (in the photo above, the second lowest branch, the thick one going to the left) for the new leader.
Chopped again now to a thickish low branch.

Now what to do with all those roots...



It will probably go back into the ground at some stage.

I had this one in a container for a year or so, but got fed up with it when it made a big swelling all around the chop and didn't grow very much. I gnawed away at the swelling and planted it in a tyre.



Chopped twice.

After some cutting/sawing.





I'll probably shorten the roots some more. What do you all think? What would you do?

Last one for today, took it out on Saturday already and did not get pics of the roots/nebari... forgot.



Left as is it looked like this after a year:

I decided not to chop it, but to just cut a chunk off the trunk (as indicated in the pic) and removing the bunch of branches.
It got roughly pruned about once a year.

Great material and evolution! Thanks for sharing.

Hey Frojo,

Great material and idea! I think the bottom one shows the most promise, so far, but all the other ones will be great as well once you start adding the secondary branches. That is, if you ever choose to stop developing the trunk