tanuki...a good learning experience?

Old gold? sorry but I ment the original name.

EDIT: You mean the chinese juniper 'chinensis' ?

cram wrote:really hard to make a good densification with it

According to the folliage I can see , I have the same spieces in one of my trees. But why do you say that is hard to make densification ? It doesn't respond well on back budding techniques? I feel anxious now.

that s it ...old gold variety doesn t bud back as well as sargentii or itoygawa
the foliage will still be like this....
two solutions...
or you keep this foliage and you think your shaping with this factor
or you graft a better spiecies on it

i did not make the graft yet on this tree....maybe i will try to keep this foliage anwd work it as it is
i just look the tree's answer for the moment

Thanks

Also tried the result here.
Juniperus communis

Gr, Jeffrey

update for this one
it is an old gold juniper...and i don t like....so i make some experimentations on it
first pic ...as it was at the first page of this topic
others ...today after new shaping session
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I removed the twisted wire restraints and now the scions are growing in the grooves on the own with the assorted screws nearly covered over. Time to work on developing the canopy and rest of the foliage. A Ficus microcarpa on Juniper deadwood. Ignore the lower right shoot - that's a sacrifice branch to fatten the lower portion of the scion.




And with some virtual foliage added. Would probably look decent defoliated but its a bit too late in the year for that.

very nice!
i like it this way also
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up for this one
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Hi Sebastien
Very nice tree - tanuki. I want to ever see live.
Gretings Pavel

thank you pavel!
if you come one day close to south of france
you will be friendly welcome to see it live in my home
(i am not sure i have the right to show a tanuki in an exposition)

Hi Cram,

Iv thoroughly enjoyed reading about your tanuki, and I am envious of your collection. I have a few questions:

What sort of base did you use for your deadwood?
How to you fight rot in your deadwood, especially in the substrate?
Did you strip the bark from the Junipers before grafting them to the deadwood?
Did you use grafting wax?


Thank you.

thank you crafty
there are differents junipers deadwood from the mountains
sometimes i burn the base before plant it in the soil...for a better conservation
and i fix with screws and wires
yes i strip the bark entierely...and clean the wood with karcher and a brush
and i do not use crafting wax

i just think it s a training for bonsai
so i don t work to make them perfect as it could

cram wrote:thank you crafty
there are differents junipers deadwood from the mountains
sometimes i burn the base before plant it in the soil...for a better conservation
and i fix with screws and wires
yes i strip the bark entierely...and clean the wood with karcher and a brush
and i do not use crafting wax

i just think it s a training for bonsai
so i don t work to make them perfect as it could

Thank you very much for the reply Cram i eagerly await updates on all your tanuki

cram wrote:i just think it s a training for bonsai
so i don t work to make them perfect as it could

And I am in awe already. I can only dream of reaching half your level.

oh well...you re kind...thank you
i am sure you can do it if you want it
but i have also a lot of spiritual masters...and as you i d really like to reach there level one day
as long i take pleasure to do it..time will tell

well a very little one...just for fun
much less powerfull of course...
(..and i think i have to reduce this long endless jin)
but only two years...
so it will be maybe something in two more years


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two last works ..cleaning ...wiring and restyling
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the other one
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cram wrote:
the other one

I love this!

Poink88 wrote:

cram wrote:
the other one

I love this!

Ill second this.

hi cram, i have just been looking at your tunuki {wrap around} creations and i have to say that i think they are brilliant,so creative and convincing you must get a lot of pleasure out of doing them.not accepted as real bonsai, and rightly so i suppose, but i do belive that they deserve some place of their own in the bonsai world and i would bet that there must be some great examples of this art form out there as you have shown. thanks for the pictures and keep up the good work , my photo is of a procumbans juniper attached to a peice of scots pine root about four and a half years in the making, not the real thing ,no, but i love it. bob hill.

Hi everyone,
I find it interesting when people say a tanuki is not a bonsai as they certainly are, and a good tanuki will take as much effort, hard work and tecnique as any other tree. The only thing holding back many examples is the lack of maturity at the moment as the trees used are mostly young thin whips. Many of these trees will develop over the coming years into magnificent trees - epsecially if they are planted in the ground first and not a pot.

I'm forming one at the moment by taking one of my oldest large juniper bonsai and attaching it to an even larger piece of juniper wood. Because the bonsai is too old and thick to bend I have carved the dead wood to take the curves in the living trunk. Then i realised what lets down most tanuki is the one single live vein and large dead trunk so I am going to add at least one or two more. These need to be exactly the same foliage though so 2 air-layers will be started soon on longer branches of the main tree so everything matches once they too are added to the dead trunk.

The only time a tanuki creation is not a proper one is when it sits by a real yamadori and the two are compared. In coming years onlookers will not be able to tell some of the better ones though, only through the owners honesty !

some very promicing trees here though - i like !

cheers Marcus

cram wrote:
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This one has really great potential as a fine literati.

Just wondering where all the great deadwood came from?

woaaa
thanks to all of you and your very kind comments
i really also think some of tanukis will become very nice old trees
(bob...yours is very nice....procumbens is really good for tanuki)

actually it depend a lot of what you are waiting from bonsai passion
personnaly it is making wiring ..shaping
and tanuki is a very good playground for this
no matter if i ll can not expose them in exhibitions

i collect the deadwoods in all the mountains around my house
even before i made some tanukis
i ve collected tons of them without knowing what i will do with
now i have a lot of material to do but when i see a nice one i still take it

at a moment i wanted to sell some ...but i still dont know how to pack them ...so i leave the idea

anyway...if you have a way to do it...i can send some ...no problem

HI all;

This morning i took some time out to repot my Tanuki Juniper today into a long oval pot. It was in a small plastic container that i bought it in 2yrs ago. Roots we trimmed on purchase, and tree was connected to the Juniper drift wood last year, and left to grow on. During repot i'd forgotten that i had trimmed the roots reasonably flat so fitting it into this pot was very easy. Combed out and lightly trimmed the root will has lots of room to grow, before i can develop some further shape and branch structure.

Hope you like it. Criticism welcome........ and yes it is a great learning experience. Just getting the whip to follow the line of the trunk was painful enough!!







Cheers
Bryan

Hi to all, and thank you to all for this fascinating thread. I've been wanting to try my hand, in fact I tried one about five years ago, enough to see I didn't have a clue how to proceed. So I've been studying on it since, gathering knowledge where I can, followed this thread with a keen eye, and much appreciation.

Meanwhile, I never tire in my continuing search for potential tanuki deadwood. I'm out in the forest quite often, and pick up and haul home anything that looks promising. Old logging sites are good picking grounds where I find a lot of Pacific Yew (Taxus brevifolia) that was uprooted as much as fifty years ago and some as recent as last year. They are the roots and a piece of trunk and some branches, perfect for tanuki projects.

Another great collection site in up in the mountain lakes. All types of root wads wash up into rocky pockets along the shores. The constant action rolls and tosses and they end up looking sandblasted, with deep ridges, just like you might spend several days with a dremel to create, al natural'. All for the price of getting there and back.

For the price of shipping I would be very pleased to share some of these finds with any interested persons. I have collected quite a few yew, western red cedar, sugar pine and some I'm not sure what.

The first thing I realized was that the trees must be bonsai ready and up to size before you commit them to the process. I began some trees five years back that I think are now fit to begin working. One is a Monterey Cypress I've grown from a sapling that's now a six foot tall whip with almost a two inch trunk and lots of branches from bottom to top.

I see predominately coniferous tanuki, but I've got my heart set on a hawthorn, so I gathered some seedlings (Crataegus monogyna) and planted them into a shady area. In two years they shot up six feet with half inch trunks, lots of branches to work with. Maybe this year I can have another go at it. Thank you all for so much input and fascinating examples to study on. With much Appreciation, Rick