Japanese hornbeam

Alright I finnaly got to collect this bahemoth!! I was so excited when I dug this tree up due to 90%of the roots were at the surface and were fine feeder roots due to me going around the tree 3 years ago with a shovel.Here she is b4 collecting.

here are a few shots of the trunk b4 collecting.


So this past tuesday was the day The nursery called and said come and get it and so I did.Here it is in its current state.this is a view from the rt side
next we will look at it from the back.

and now the left side.

And last but not least the front. You can see where I chopped the top off to make the new leader it was already dead so I removed the dead and trimmer the rest back to fit it in to the truck but left a lot on the tree

You can see where I will be gowing with this tree after I remove the large branch on the middle rt growing straight up and the largest branch 3/4 of the way up on the left.It will be a formitable sumo!

for now I will concentrate on watering and feeding for at least 1 growing season b4 performing any work.by the way the traning pot it is in measures 4 foot by 2 foot

Thats a ripper. I am looking forward to where you go with it!

!!!

nice one!!!!

Thanks for the positive comments .I am as excited to get started on this tree as a kid in an all you can eat candy store.Like I said b4 I was able to retain 90% or better of the rootsand they are all fine feeder with exception of the large main roots .But I will still let it recover and regain strength for 1 growing season b4 any further work is performed ( if I can keep telling myself that mabye I will be able to resist the temptation of my precious)

That sure is a beauty, did you have any luck with the Japanese Black Pine?

Seth. You've posted pics of this one before have'nt you? Its going to be a beauty I f it were mine, I'd be thinking about reducing all the side branches down to stubs an inch long, as they're unworkable. All the new growth will form at the end of those cuts anyway. Cut back hard and you'll get lots of new shoots on the trunk and branch terminals. Keep it in the large pot for a few years and you'll soon bulk up any new branches

Will ,that's the plan i have for it .The training pot it is in is 4 foot by 2 foot (.60 meters by 1.2 meters)I don't think I will be able to find anything larger . It took 2 of us all we had to get it up on my bench.I was going to let it catch back up for 1 growing season b4 chopping but I don't know if it necessary?

Cordon, the pine ended up being pinus leucodermis ( bosnian pine) I do have it in the back yard as well and collected it with great sucess .I will try to get a thread up for it also.

This tree is my best work yet.I knew i would have sucess with this tree after the massive amount of rootage I was able to keep when collecting and it showed.This thing bursted out with flowers and seed pods all over wich I dilligently removed all except for the ones I could not reach and will get the ladder out this weekend and take off.The agenda for this tree is feed feed and more feed then next year the chopping and shaping will begin.




Pic 3 is still my perfered front.

Got out today and was fertilizing my trees and doing some mantinance weeding and such and decided to snap a few progress photos.


The decided front

As I was looking at the tree I saw these tiny mushrooms popping up in the thickest crags of bark I thought to my self ooh no this part if the tree is dead!! so I took a small drill bit and bored a tiny hole and it went back to live cambrium I seems that these are growing off of the bark and not a rotten trunk Never seen anything like it before.I also looked at a few branches that were dead and there is no fingi to be seen ???

I have decided the next step in this trees development .I have marked where the cuts for next spring are going and hopefully this will trigger the branches to back bud closer to the trunk for selection of the final design.the following year if all goes well I will remove the remainder of the larger branches.The tree has responded well with the back budding this past year so I figure if I take it slow it should do the samefor me this comming year(2011).

The time has come to post up an update on this tree. This spring I took some more off the tops of the branches I did not intend to keep to get some back budding on the lower portions of the tree. And boy did it respond I have lots more than I will ever need so primary branch selecting this fall-spring will be excellent. This is the 3rd year in this container and to me it looks like the root mass has developed well. I am thinking of doing a repot this spring to turn the tree 90 deg so it is oriented in the pot the way it should be. And mabye potting it in the mica training pot i have for it to start to get to the final styling and work on ramification I want. This tree is going to bankrupt me when it is time to buy the final bonsai pot I will need for it. The diameter of this tree with roots is approx 18-20 inches In the first pic you can see in the background the slab for my new workshop deticated to my hobby that is in the process of being finished 14' by 18'.It will be nice to sit in the ac and work on trees in this hot humid state. I am concidering starting up a study group when it is finished.



I would love to take this tree to a workshop and get some opinions but it is way to heavy for just one person to lift. So this fall when the leaves drop I will post another picture and possibly have an online workshop .

Awesome material, Seth, with amazing potential! The nebari on this thing is fabulous and the trunk is very impressive. I'm just wondering, though, why didn't you cut the trunks back when you originally collected it instead of waiting until the following season? It seems like waiting would only set you back on developing new branches. This is probably inconsequential and I'm just curious to what your reasoning was. Thanks for posting.

Cory

The first time I cut the branches on this tree While in the ground a few of them died all the way back to the trunk. So I tried a diffrent approach. The next spring I cut them back by half to see what the back budding would be like and it only back budded on the branch part and not on the trunk.So this spring I halfed it again crossed my fingers and it back budded to what you see here. With this particular tree if you do not have a branch below what you are cutting off it will die all the way back to the trunk. So I am taking it slow due to I have never seen a Japanese hornbeam with this size trunk and I do not want to loose it.The branches I have now will be the new primaries and at the rate of growth I have been getting they will be nice and proportinate in approx 3 years.

So the time has come to style this beast and I decided to do a vid.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1GPDx7r0lw&feature=g-upl&context=G25d1c5eAUAAAAAAAAAA

The new front looks impressive, great nebari and tachgari. Good luck keeping the borers off it, perhaps regular systemic insecticide will help.

Very nice material Todd, congratulations.

Xuan

Seth, that is a very nice material and progressed very nicely too!

Question from a newbie who never even wired yet. I noticed that each pad was wired almost all straight and flat and looking from the top of each pad, seems 2-dimensional. Is that normal for first wiring? Or you just expect the ramification to create the 3-D volume later? Thank you.

Rob Kempinski wrote:The new front looks impressive, great nebari and tachgari. Good luck keeping the borers off it, perhaps regular systemic insecticide will help.

Thanks rob. I think I have removed all of the borers but yes the last 2 yeasr I have been using bayer advanced tree and shrub for the systemic. Do you know of a better one ??

Poink88 wrote:Seth, that is a very nice material and progressed very nicely too!

Question from a newbie who never even wired yet. I noticed that each pad was wired almost all straight and flat and looking from the top of each pad, seems 2-dimensional. Is that normal for first wiring? Or you just expect the ramification to create the 3-D volume later? Thank you.

I am still in the process of setting the pads on this tree but the leaves and ramified secondary branches will add some dimension and I am still trying to decide if the right side vs the left side will be the lower of the two to make a primary. Typically when you wire a pad you remove all upward and downward growing branches to form your foliage pads.

seth, I like your monster tree, have you ever had luck collecting american hornbeam that big? something that Ive continued to be unsuccessful at figuring out is this- when taking a clump as you had and removing large portions of it (you or borers) to end up with a very tapered tree, do you have trouble with nebari dying if they are not connected to a shoot anymore? I think (but dont know) deciduous are not as picky as junipers about exact veins feeding exact branches , but there must be some limit to how much of the nebari that one leader can now keep alive. Ive been told that doing it gradually helps but the person didnt seem confident when telling me that. I ask because I have multiple field grown trees that Ive kept suckers around the bases just to keep the nebari all the way around alive, and im going to have to remove them at some point in time eventually. The other option to ensure nebari continue living would be to treat them as a clump style I guess. This predicament is especially true with fused azaleas, tridents and ficuses, the nebari are incredible and one of my main attractions to fused trees, im just not sure what happens when you go to remove the top portions even after they have fused well. Doug phillips used to have a site on fusion bonsai yet its gone and I would be curious how those trees ended up doing once they were cut back and if sections started dying. I guess on a juniper dead nebari could be attractive yet on softwood trees it would eventually rot away and you would end up with a flat tree on one side.

Yes I have successfully collected carpinus caroliniana. however on approx 75 % of them a section of the nebari and trunk died back. I have learned through trial and error to style in the ground meaning do a trunk chop from 12-18" higher then you want the tree to be.While still in the ground you will get some die back hence cutting way above your projected apex. Next year after the tree has back budded re cut to your desired apex and do perliminary branch selection.The following year cut half of the root base and leave a 3"gap between the tree and old roots filled with bonsai soil.The following year repeat with the other half of the root ball. finnaly the next season collect the tree and let grow freely for 2 more years b4 styling.This is the process I use with almost 100%success keeping all of the nebari and back budded branches . On smaller trees you might not need to go as slow but the trunks I collect are in the 6-8 in range. I can never seem to keep them past a few years before they end up in someone elses collection but I have a few in the ground I will not let go of that will be collected in a few years. Also never let them get dry that is the easiest way to get trunk and nebari die back.This is the tequnique I also used with this tree.After collecting I did 2 more trunk reductions and let the tree grow 3 years before the video styling. As far as carving american hornbeam I always try to keep a branch between the nebari and where I make my cuts just in case.I have found they are similar to a japanese maple in when you cut a branch or trunk it tends to die back to the next node or branch in the case of a trunk chop. So after taking the long way around the answer to your question is yes. I would remove the suckers and keep them rubbed off as long as you have branches above. Suckers can cause the upper branches to eventually die off.